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

[00:00] You've worked at so many great companies that YouTube, when you joined, my understanding is YouTube was losing a lot of money. There were many times where Google leadership reconsidered the acquisition and should we like sell YouTube, if you can believe it or not. At Thumbtack, it looks like you went from one to negative one and then back to one. I remember in a board meeting, the new model really started to show legs. And one of the board members, Brian Schreier at Sequoia, said it was the prettiest smile graph that he had ever seen. When you were at Facebook, you built what is called the new product experimentation team, trying to create a startup within a startup. [00:30] different time horizon. 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. It's the wrong incentive. As the chief product officer at Grammarly, I'm curious what word you most often misspell. The. You do T-E-H? T-E-H, yeah, exactly. Today, my guest is Noam Levinsky. Noam is currently [01:00] at YouTube where you spend five years leading the creator product experience and then the broader YouTube consumer product experience. [01:07] He then went on to take on the chief product officer role at Thumbtack, which involved helping the company reignite growth after a downturn caused by some changes Google made in SEO. He then went on to Facebook, where he created the new product experimentation team, whose charter was to incubate big new ideas protected from the larger Facebook org. Noam has such a unique set of experiences, taking products from 0 to 1, from negative 1 to 1, from 1 to 100, and even starting his own companies.

[01:37] a podcast before and he rarely ever tweets or post anything online, which we actually talk about. In our conversation, we walk through the lessons that he's learned through his amazing career at YouTube, Facebook, Thumbtack, and at Grammarly. We talk about when it makes sense to kill your project at a company, when it makes sense to ask to be layered at a company, why you should be keeping a nose out for which products matter most at a business and how to find those products, [02:07] work that is going to most stretch you to help you advance in your career, a bunch of advice for creating space for innovation within a large company, and so much more. Noam is such a gem, and I'm really excited to share his wisdom with you. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow this podcast in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Noam [02:37] brought to you by Whimsical, the iterative product workspace. Whimsical helps product managers build clarity and shared understanding faster with tools designed for solving product challenges. With Whimsical, you can easily explore new concepts using drag-and-drop wireframe and diagram components, create rich product briefs that show and sell your thinking, and keep your team aligned with one source of truth for all of your build requirements. Whimsical also has a library of [03:07] leaders like myself, including a project proposal one pager and a go-to-market worksheet. Give them a try and see how fast and easy it is to build clarity with Whimsical. Sign up at whimsical.com slash Lenny for 20% off a Whimsical pro plan. That's whimsical.com slash Lenny. This episode is brought to you by Vanta. When it comes to ensuring your company has top-notch

[03:37] you can assess risk, secure the trust of your customers, and automate compliance for SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and more with a single platform, Vanta. Vanta's market-leading trust management platform helps you continuously monitor compliance alongside reporting and tracking risk. Plus, you can save hours by completing security questionnaires with Vanta AI. [04:07] and streamline security reviews. Get $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com slash lenny. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash lenny. [04:19] Noam, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, Lenny. [04:27] It's absolutely my pleasure. I've heard so many great things about you from so many people. I think you're friends with a lot of guests that have been on this podcast. [04:34] And something that I find really interesting about you and really respect about you is [04:38] is that you've worked at so many great companies and you've done so many [04:42] big things in your career but [04:45] You barely ever tweet. [04:46] You don't have a newsletter. I don't see many things on LinkedIn. [04:49] I don't think you've even been on a podcast before. I think the only evidence I can find that you exist is you have this YouTube channel that's just like you go-karting and kids and people wishing you a happy birthday. [05:00] Oh, gosh. I should go monitor that. I forgot about that. You might want to. People are going to go...

[05:08] Find it now. Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I think about that a lot. Like, am I doing something wrong? Should I be putting more effort in that? I mean, it's funny that you mentioned newsletter. Like, I spend a lot of time with the Substack team. It's been a very active advisor there. The team is fantastic, by the way. And I think about it. Am I doing something wrong in my career by not doing that? But just to be honest, it doesn't come authentically to me. It doesn't come naturally to me. [05:38] working on and get really deep in the thing that I am working on. And I have a hard time kind of [05:44] multitasking a lot outside of that, to be totally honest. And the way that I kind of get to know the industry and other teams or whatnot is just through working with people. I'm not like a very big networker. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that. I wish I were better at that. I get to know people by doing work with them, by helping them. And it doesn't necessarily [06:14] well so far and it's more kind of authentic and it's what comes more natural to me. And so that's how I do it. So I'm doing a lot of coffees. I'm meeting people that way. I'm not doing a lot of tweeting or writing newsletters, maybe one day, but that's not me today. [06:31] So I think this is an awesome example of you can be incredibly successful as a product manager and as anyone in tech not investing time posting online.

[06:40] I'm going to incriminate myself here, but I feel like the advice I always share with people is, [06:44] the best [06:45] People are not spending time tweeting and [06:48] talking online, sharing on LinkedIn, they're just doing the work. They don't have time for that sort of thing. And I think you're a great example of that. [06:54] Is there anything along those lines that you share with folks that are just like, "Hey, should I be investing time here?" [06:58] I think everyone can chart their own path and has a way that is sort of authentic to them and leans on their strengths. What I often coach people is, do what you like. You're generally going to be a lot better at the things that really fill you up, that really get you excited. And life is short. There's so many things to be doing out there. We're so lucky. [07:21] interesting waves of technology that I've experienced. It just makes me feel like it's going to keep happening for a long time. We're very fortunate to be born in the time that we are and have the opportunities that we are. So why spend your time doing something that doesn't feel good because you think that it might lead to some success where if you lean on what's authentic to you and what makes you happy, chances are you're going to be one of the best people at those things. [07:49] I love that advice. And I think it's so important. I think there's a lot of pressure on people too. I need to do this. I need to do that. [07:54] I need a tweet, I need it. [07:55] share content to be successful. [07:57] This comes up a lot in this podcast, that the more you could just stick close to what gives you energy and what you enjoy doing, oftentimes that. [08:04] leads to things you wouldn't expect and a lot of success. [08:07] Speaking of that, [08:08] Looking at your career arc, [08:09] I noticed a really interesting pattern and a really

[08:13] diverse set of experiences. So just kind of talking through places you've been. [08:17] at Facebook, you worked on zero to one stuff. [08:21] at YouTube. [08:22] The way I see it is you almost went from negative 1 to 1. [08:26] At Thumbtack, [08:28] It looks like you went from one to negative one and then back to one. So it's like a really unique turnaround story. And then with Grammarly, it feels like it's like, I don't know, one or I don't know. [08:37] five to a hundred or wherever and taking it. [08:40] So I thought it'd be fun to talk through each of these experiences because they're such unique [08:44] approaches or such unique experiences. [08:47] and see what lessons and wisdom we can extract from your journey. [08:51] Sounds great. [08:51] Okay, sweet. [08:53] So I'm thinking, reverse chronologically, we start with YouTube. [08:57] which, [08:58] The way I see it is it's kind of negative one to one. When you join, my understanding is, [09:01] YouTube is losing a lot of money. [09:03] When you left, they were not losing money. And I was actually just looking... [09:06] They're valued apparently at $200 billion today, YouTube as a business. [09:10] I know you haven't been there for a while, but great work. [09:14] What lessons did you take away from that journey? What stories come to mind from that part of your career that might be helpful to people? [09:20] Maybe first to start with kind of like why hop around these experiences. I always tell people I feel like I'm an IC trapped in a manager's body sometimes like [09:30] Fundamentally, I like to build. That's why I do this. I like to make things. Sometimes the more fun way to make things is to start something. Sometimes the better way to make things in the situation that I'm in is to try to support teams and lead through teams.

[09:49] And so, you know, I joined YouTube through through an acquisition of a company I started. And in the in the beginning, what I was doing there is just, you know, rebuilding that product on on Google, on Google infrastructure and for for YouTube, YouTube customers. [10:19] of the thing that you're working on, [10:21] even if it might lead to your project getting canceled. So one of the things that I remember doing really on is actually talking to the leadership team and being like, "I don't think we should be putting 50 engineers on this project." Looking at the rest of the priorities, I think this team would likely be better served elsewhere, even though that was likely negotiating my way out [10:51] I kind of felt like that was the right thing for the team and for the business. And then that started a very interesting journey because from there, basically, the leadership was like, you're right. We're going to wind that down and build some of those features into the existing product. And now you come and lead this focus area we're calling the creator focus area.

[11:21] built. [11:22] to leading one of the three focus areas at YouTube. There was the viewer team, the creator team, and the advertiser team. And Hunter Wok, who's amazing, was leading the viewer team. And Shashir Marotra, who's also very amazing, was leading the advertising team. What a one in my community. There was me. And I was like, you know, I was sort of like, you know, [11:45] 29-year-old startup-y guy working with these guys who were awesome, and YouTube in general was and continues to be an incredible team. And so I think that was like a first really good lesson that in the right organizations, even in large organizations, there's a lot of people who are in the right organizations. [12:03] Advocate for what's best for the team. Advocate for what's best for the organization, even if that means that it puts you at a particular difficult moment. If it is a healthy team that rewards those sorts of decisions and actions, good things will happen. If it's not, that's good to know too. And that's good to know early. [12:33] like atypical, you know, career choice that I made shortly thereafter is then when I was when I was [12:42] put in that role, I really struggled in that role. I was reporting to the CEO at the time, a guy named Saur Kamankar, who's also awesome, Google's sixth employee, and just learned a ton from him, like an incredible strategic thinker. But he was asking me questions that I felt like they were from a different planet. I was like, I didn't know what they meant. And he just thought

[13:12] level of different scale. And that's still something that I was learning. Eventually, I figured it out. But I was really struggling in that moment. And I had a really good relationship with both Hunter and Shashir. And they really helped me through that. And eventually, I went to Salar and said, hey, I think I should actually report to Hunter. I think this would work better if we combined the organizations this way, and then we divided and conquered this way. [13:42] Typical. No one has ever come to me in my career and said, I would like you to layer me in this other person. But in that moment, I was just like, this is how I will do better work. This is how I will get better support. I will be happier and more productive. [14:01] and it will be better for the team. And you know what, like I, for me anyway, I was right. And we, we made that change and Hunter was a fantastic manager and support at YouTube. I like learned a ton, grew a lot. And then eventually when, when he moved on, you know, Shashir took over the organization and then I moved into the, into the viewer part of the organization, which is where I spent, you know, the, the rest of my time there, which was leading and supporting the viewer PM [14:31] YouTube. [14:32] These stories are amazing. It connects to your point that you're kind of an IC, an inner child IC, where you keep trying to kill your... [14:39] Kill your career by accident. Like, no, let's kill this project I'm working on. I'm going to demote myself a little bit.

[14:44] But clearly, it's worked out. Is there anything that you saw that gave you that confidence that [14:49] this is actually going to be okay. Because again, people don't normally think this is how you get ahead in your career, is you kill your [14:55] team and you [14:56] layer yourself. Yeah. I think having a broader view of the company's strategy, having an instinct for what we should be doing and why, and how I might prioritize all of these investments if I were given the opportunity to do that. I think internalizing that and understanding that and then trying to align whatever [15:20] is under your influence towards that overall goal is very helpful and made me feel like I'm pretty confident this is going to be okay because it will lead to better results for the organization, given what we're trying to do. And so as long as I'm trying to push decisions or actions that actually lead to better results, [15:43] If it's a healthy culture and organization, I should be okay. And I think that the other thing is just over the years, I got extremely lucky. The first job that I got out of school was an incredible group of people, and it gave me... [16:02] a nose for talent. [16:04] It gave me a nose for like what... [16:07] like great feels like and what like a high functioning team feels like. And it's hard to like kind of,

[16:14] like know that without like experiencing that. And so in, in the, in the moments like in YouTube was also one of those teams, like grammar is one of those teams. If Thumbtack was one of those teams, being able to sniff that out when you're trying to kind of choose the, um, [16:28] the next the next team is is uh uh is is very important but i think that's another thing that gave me confidence like i i learned you know these people well enough um you know hunter shashir etc to have that kind of the instinct that the right thing will happen like this will this will be um you know better for for me and the and the broader team [16:49] Got it. So the key there is just you have to trust that the team around you is [16:52] is good enough that you're not going to be [16:54] pushed off into a corner. [16:56] I think you made a really profound point here that a lot of people... [17:00] don't get about the job of a product leader and a product manager. [17:03] that [17:04] A big part of your job is to think about what is best for the business. [17:08] and work backwards from that. [17:10] not necessarily [17:12] What's the best thing for the user is the highest priority. [17:15] necessarily what's the best thing for my team and how do I hit the goals that I'm obsessed with. It's [17:19] what is going to be best for the business broadly and then make decisions there. [17:23] Is there anything more you can say there about just how powerful that is as a way of thinking about it? [17:28] prioritization and decisions as a product manager. [17:31] Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think ideally, you know, [17:35] Things that are best for the customer, there's high overlap with that with things that are best for the business, but not always. And I think figuring out some principles that help guide those sorts of conflicts can be really important.

[17:51] really helpful. Like at Thumbtack we had principles [17:55] about which sides of the marketplace we wanted to serve in which order, and kind of when we served Thumbtack, right? So it was customers first, [18:06] pros second, and then thumbtack last. And that's actually the first two. Saying thumbtack last is like the easy thing to say. Actually doing it in action, I think, is a very different thing. But that first one of like, should we, you know, especially when you're starting a marketplace, as you know well, Lenny, like supply is so critical. Like many marketplaces live and die by the quality and liquidity and supply. And so why would you, you know, focus on customers first [18:36] and supply are the pros, the people that you hire. We always just felt that what the pros need from us is more customers. [18:45] what the pros need from us is like high quality customers. And so if we really try to make a great customer experience that attracts more customers, helps them find the right pros, provides the highest quality customers, then that will therefore be better for the pros. And so that's how we should prioritize. And so that's, and if we do those things right, [19:05] then the business will benefit, right? And so doing things like... [19:09] Raising prices because we think it's good for the business, even though it causes liquidity issues in the marketplace, might be a little, you know, a little bit of a local maxima, right? Locally optimizing rather than globally optimizing. So I think sometimes in these in these sorts of questions, trying to establish some set of guiding principles that help navigate some of these more, you know, ambiguous or thorny questions can be really helpful.

[19:39] you [19:40] and experience you had [19:41] convincing people that your first project shouldn't be something you work on. [19:46] How long do you stick with something that isn't going well and then decide, okay, let's convince people this is something I should do? [19:51] move on from versus like you don't want to give up on a project quickly right you want to [19:55] Give it a shot. [19:56] I mean, look, I don't know that it's a perfect answer, but I think the reality is that what kills... [20:02] most projects, most early companies is stamina. And I think that we all need to work on being more resilient about... I remember at Thumbtack, Marco, the CEO, we used to say that it feels like we're running uphill and chewing glass. And you kind of like... [20:23] That's right. We want to do that. That's good for us. Take our medicine. So you want to practice that sort of resiliency. But ultimately, I think that what starts to happen is you start to lose the stamina and you're just not bringing your best self to the situation. And so many of these things that are like... [20:44] so high ambiguity where you don't know exactly what to build or you don't know exactly, you're not getting the signal you need or the feedback you need to be able to hone it in and know that you're [20:54] that you're doing something well, they require just an ungodly level of faith and stamina. And so that's sort of what I look to. When you see a team that is motivated, that is building something they're really excited about,

[21:11] I mean, just like the inertia, the quality, like just everything. It's just it's like a whole different game where when you see a team that's sort of like down and out and they've, you know, they've they've really they've been hitting their head against the wall for a long time. Sometimes they just need like a change of scene, a change, change of pace, and they get to like a much better situation. So my my honest answer is, is, yeah, it's the when do you run out of steam is usually the question. [21:41] Like in the startup case, a lot of times before you run out of money or these other things. [21:48] We've talked about Thumbtack a couple times now, so let's talk about that. I love this description of running uphill, chewing glass. [21:54] My understanding is when you join things were going well and then things started to go much less well. [22:00] And then you help turn things around. [22:02] Talk about that part of your journey and what you learned from that time. [22:04] Yeah, sure. Again, really fantastic team and really strong founders. [22:11] That company was just on the bleeding edge of things like SEO and growing by SEO. And it was one of the best organizations at driving growth through that channel. But I think the thing that I learned really early, which Lenny, with your background, you probably know as well, SEO is a sort of like a live by the sword, die by the sword channel of growth. And I think that one channel growth company is always a no-no. [22:41] That's a little bit of what we had at Thumbtack. So it was funny because I remember when I joined and Marco and I had an agreement where it's like, okay, I'm going to do my three months of onboarding, listening tour, new leader, inheriting a team. I've always gotten advice. That's what you should do. And Marco being an entrepreneur and a hard-running founder is like, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. And then a month in, it's like, all right, we've got to run 2024 planning. Go.

[23:11] Or not 2024, sorry, at the time. And yeah, in the early days when I was there, Thumbtack was seeing triple-digit growth. [23:21] Then we had a couple SEO hits that got us down to double-digit growth. And then not too long after that, we were actually, for the first time in the company's history, seeing negative year-over-year growth. And Google was just really coming down on our category as we were, by the way, trying to rebuild the whole product and change the monetization model and everything in between. [23:51] a tough, tough moment of, you know, how much do we kind of spend to reinforce the old model while we're sort of building the new model, kind of changing the, you know, the engine while the plane is flying. [24:05] And I think I remember in a board meeting, once we kind of like turn that around and over time and also the new model really started to show legs and really started to work. One of the board members, Brian Schreier at Sequoia, said it was the prettiest smile graft that he had ever, ever seen. And it was a really, you know, obviously a really proud, proud moment there. But I think that the thing that I took away from that, which I tell PMs quite a bit, is, you know, growth masks all problems. [24:35] really have an, I think, true understanding of like what is working well and what is not working well when you have like incredible growth. YouTube was a great example of that. And at Thumbtack, it had incredible growth for quite some time, but it was essentially burning through a lot of demand. It was just dropping a lot of demand on the floor because there wasn't sufficient liquidity on the supply side to really meet that demand.

[24:58] and the team knew and was trying to like work on that on that problem but you know [25:03] it wasn't as urgent or high priority because you're having triple-digit growth. What's wrong? Everything's going great. And then the moment growth starts to slow or certainly when growth starts to be negative, all of a sudden, the tenor in the organization really changes. And you start looking at things very differently and trying to understand what's actually going on. And so I think it's actually a very healthy thing for businesses to go through as they [25:33] long-term sustainable businesses to have those sorts of moments. Because I think otherwise, it's just really challenging to identify where the true issues are. And I think as a PM, if you've only ever worked on things that grow and you've never felt the other side of that and how to help turn that around with your team, I think you lose a lot in your career if you don't [26:03] I often look at things and ask myself, "Okay, what would I do right now if it went negative? How would I prioritize things if it went negative?" Having gone through that experience. [26:11] I just... [26:12] I look at things in a different way of urgency. I look at things at different levels of priority given [26:21] having gone through that experience. [26:25] With this Thumbtack story, I think it's rare that [26:28] A business gets...

[26:29] The smile graph that you described, this prettiest smile graph that this board member has ever seen. I think that is rarely the case. Usually it doesn't come back up. [26:38] Can you share what you did to help Thumbtack turn things around? I know it's very particular to Thumbtack and the business, but just anything there that would be useful to people. Sure. First of all, this is very much the team. It's not just things that I did. First was turning on multiple channels of growth. Up until then, Thumbtack had tried and stopped paid channels, other organic channels, like referrals. [27:08] you know, all of the typical things. And so we just went back to first principles on a lot of that and also just kind of reformed a team around that process [27:21] and basically got an amazing team together. One of them, Whitney Steele, is running marketing at Descript now. Another one, David Shine, is running product at HIMSS. But basically, went back to first principles on some of those growth channels and experimented our way to much, much better results. And I think that one of the things that we were doing incorrectly at [27:51] Right. Like DJs in Philadelphia is one marketplace. You know, DJs in, you know, Atlanta is another marketplace. Contractors in Sonoma is another marketplace. And then Thumbtack is is obviously the container of all of those marketplaces.

[28:21] probably providing sort of the more aggregate data to Google and others and then optimizing from there. The fact that we already had really good showing in SEO and really good page rank in SEO helped to [28:35] bolster things like SEM and then eventually Facebook as well. But I think that the core issue, those were kind of the growth levers, but the core issue with the Thumbtack product was that it was just a very high friction process. [28:52] customer experience that really left customers waiting. So the way that Thumbtack worked basically was a customer would find them through a search query. They would come in and they would answer a number of questions about the job they needed done. And then Thumbtack would say, okay, great, we'll get back to you in 24 hours. And this is like a modern day experience, right? [29:16] And then what Thumbtack would do is they would take that job and they would federate it out to [29:22] that might match the criteria. [29:24] And then the pros would pay to quote to show up as a potential provider for that job. Now, I don't want to take anything away from that team because that worked phenomenally well for a really long time. And actually, it's a perfect case study in just do the scrappy thing that works to grow. And they did that very well. But the stage and size of the business when I joined it had outgrown that and the process

[29:51] And the team knew that. That's obviously a very high friction experience, right? Like the idea that the customer, they're super excited, they want to hire someone. And at that moment, you'd be like, cool, talk to you soon. Not the best experience. And the fact that you're asking your supply to put up money to even show up. [30:11] to customers in the first place or what the customers want to see is the supply. Tell me who I can hire. Also, a lot of friction on that side and also in some cases, some unfair revenue on [30:26] folks are paying to be seen and maybe they're looked at, but there's not really high intent, then they're not going to get the customers they want. They're going to be spending revenue. They're not going to be getting revenue back. It turns into just a bad loop, obviously. So the main thing we did is to rebuild that whole loop, change the monetization model, build a system where essentially pros could provide instant quotes. Like Lenny, I'm sure [30:56] to instant booking. [30:58] It was a very similar thing in a different kind of category of service and supply, obviously. But that shift and doing that shift across those thousands of marketplaces and then finding the right [31:11] friction point for monetization and when and what to charge people for and all of that, all of that change. That is what really, you know, at its core turned the growth engine around at Thumbtack. And it's just a real testament to those founders that they kind of

[31:28] believe that like saw that and were willing to kind of like you know uh run a pill and chew glass to get to that point like i i don't know the details of the business anymore and i and if i did i wouldn't speak to it but from what i hear things are going well so um i think that that that served the company well [31:45] Yeah, as you were talking about that, that's exactly... [31:48] experience Airbnb went through. I actually led that effort at Airbnb. It took three years of my life. Oh my gosh, we should talk about that one day. Yeah, I've written about it here and there, but [31:59] Honestly, very quietly is one of the biggest transformations Airbnb went through, shifting from I'm going to go request a book to basically every booking now on Airbnb is instant. [32:08] And that was a very difficult and painful journey. But looking back, I don't think Airbnb would have made it if not for that. [32:15] And, [32:16] Unlike Thumbtack, we did it before things were starting to fall apart. Like, we're like, we... [32:21] And actually, I was going to say, the lens that we used that I find really helpful here is, [32:26] You should be asking yourself, if somebody was to come into our space and disrupt us and start now to become the new Airbnb, what would they do? Yeah, totally. And it was obvious they'd be, make it instant. Just the way it works. Welcome to Airbnb. [32:38] disruptor. Another learning there is any product you work on that involves bits and atoms is exponentially harder than products that just involve bits. But it's amazing how something as seemingly simple as make it instant ends up being so incredibly deep and complicated, and especially on an existing business, making that transition while still growing is just very, very complicated. Fantastic learning, I'm sure you had as well.

[33:08] people's expectations and behavior. [33:10] This could be its own podcast episode, just changing marketplaces into an instant experience. [33:14] I wanted to circle back real quick to the first lesson you had there, which is adding new channels. I think that's a really interesting takeaway here. So essentially, Thumbtack was reliant on SEO. [33:24] Google slash the sword, as you described, started changing things. [33:28] So traffic's job. [33:29] Coming. [33:30] And I think a cool lesson here is just if you're reliant on one growth channel, which I think most companies actually are, I think most companies have one main driver. [33:38] I think a lesson here is potentially [33:40] before things start to fall apart, especially if you're SEO driven. [33:43] start to explore more proactively paid referrals. Totally. I mean, I think maybe it's, again, it's kind of like living through that. Now, anytime I look at a product or look at a team, it's like one of the first things that perks up the paranoia. I'm just like, oh, no, you don't want to be in that situation. Let's figure out now how you start to diversify because you just never know, like you say, when one of those might dry up. Imagine a place where you can find all [34:13] in a cost-efficient way. [34:15] If you're a B2B business, that place exists, and it's called LinkedIn. LinkedIn Ads allows you to build the right relationships, drive results, and reach your customers in a respectful environment. Two of my portfolio companies, Webflow and Census, are LinkedIn success stories. Census had a 10x increase in pipeline with the LinkedIn startup team. For Webflow, after ramping up on LinkedIn in Q4, they had the highest marketing source revenue quarter to date.

[34:45] and can build relationships with decision makers, including 950 million members, 180 million senior execs, and over 10 million C-level executives. [34:54] You'll be able to drive results with targeting and measurement tools built specifically for B2B. In tech, LinkedIn generated a 2 to 5x higher return on ad spend than any other social media platforms. Audiences on LinkedIn have two times the buying power of the average web audience, and you'll work with a partner who respects the B2B world you operate in. Make B2B marketing everything it can be and get $100 credit on your next campaign. Just go to linkedin.com slash pod Lenny to claim your credit. [35:24] slash pod Lenny. Terms and conditions apply. [35:28] Is there anything else from your time at Thumbtack that... [35:31] stands out as an interesting lesson or takeaway that you bring with you [35:35] to the work you do now? I would say this. I think especially at the leadership level, [35:44] You know, in the team that reports to the CEO, [35:50] that group doesn't always have the opportunity to do a lot of project work together, right? You've got your CFO, you've got your head of sales, you've got your product and your engineering, and there's just not as often a sort of natural ways for that group to work together. And then when something happens like growth goes negative, that group is very important.

[36:20] hard things together is very important. And I think that one important lesson from that is no one can be a bystander on product strategy. Just because you've got product in your title doesn't mean you're the only one that should be thinking about product strategy, certainly at that level. Certainly not in engineering. The CFO, the head of people, everyone needs to have a seat at the table when it comes to product strategy, what the company is doing and what they're going to do [36:50] situation that they're in. [36:52] Because otherwise, like in those in those hard times, if it's kind of it can kind of be like a, you know, what have you done for me lately, sort of sort of a dynamic. And that's just not not the right dynamic to have on on that on that team. And I'm not saying that at Thumbtack, we had the right dynamic, but I think it was a really important learning in that moment of how that team, you know, even if they didn't typically, you know, kind of get as involved in things like product strategy and what we're building, how everyone had to be like all hands on deck, [37:22] about those sorts of problems. That's the only way I think you can get a whole company and team out of those situations. That's why everyone getting involved in doing their part and pulling on the levers that they have in their area in order to do that well. I don't think it can work in any other way. [37:38] So there's a lesson there, build a relationship with the leadership team. [37:41] Before things start to go awry. [37:44] Yes, certainly that. But I think it's also incumbent for people in our roles and engineering roles to bring strategy to that discussion, to that group, in a way that it is possible for everyone to engage and everyone to internalize and understand what it means for their area.

[38:11] Like they should feel like their fingerprint is also on the company strategy. And as soon as it starts to feel like that's their world, that's our world. And I think that's true for any of those, any of the functions. It's true for like what's happening in sales. It's true for what's happening in marketing. You know, as product managers, we naturally need to be that connective tissue across all of that. But I think the whole leadership team at that level should feel like connective tissue across all of those functions. [38:39] Okay, let's transition to... [38:41] Facebook. [38:42] And this is, I think, an example of zero to one. So when you were at Facebook, you built what is called the new product experimentation team. I actually thought it was called the new product experience team, but I think it's new product experimentation team. [38:55] And my understanding is the idea there is instead of Facebook having to buy the next Instagram and WhatsApp and all the things, basically... [39:02] incubate startups within Facebook, kind of this fabled concept. [39:06] A startup within a startup. Create all these startups within a startup. [39:09] And [39:10] As an outsider, it feels like it [39:12] It was really fun for a while, but it hasn't led to any amazing... [39:16] new businesses for Facebook, correct me if I'm wrong. [39:20] I'm curious what that experience was like, what you took away from it, how it went, what you... [39:25] think about when you look back at that part of your journey? I was one of a few folks that joined that team early and helped build that team. How it ended up and how it closed down, I'm not familiar with because I wasn't there. But I think in terms of was it a success or not?

[39:42] because it didn't build the next Instagram, I think is a little bit of the wrong bar to set for things like that. To some extent, it's like, did the group win the lottery or not? And let's judge their success. Obviously, I'm not saying that discovering something like Instagram is just like winning the lottery. But you get what I mean in terms of the rarity of those sorts of discoveries and those sorts of products. [40:12] you [40:13] I think that that team was very realistic about sort of the, what I would say, would be like the champagne level outcomes and or more likely, you know, kind of beer, like nice dinner kind of like level outcome. You get wine? Yeah, the wine. Yeah, thank you. That's a better analogy. [40:43] So as an example, one of them is at Facebook scale, doing things that... [40:51] don't scale or doing things that start out small was just a muscle that was, you know, really hard to come by. Right. It's it's like any community product that you build, any kind of like social where like there's community density that's important, like early on. [41:09] any product that you build that way, starting with a million users is a really hard way to do that. And at places like Facebook and Google, it's hard to run an experiment with 100 people. It's not hard. It's impossible.

[41:25] And so this idea that you would have to get real small, that you would have to start very targeted, that you would have to start with things that clearly... [41:37] don't scale and don't have a chance of being big from the get-go is really, really hard in an organization like that. And so creating that space for NPE to be able to do that, to be able to help remind the organization, what are the mechanisms we need to be able to build and learn that way, was very beneficial. Even simple things, like at an organization... [42:04] Facebook size, maybe you experience this at Airbnb, it is really hard for product managers, engineers, and designers to talk directly with customers. It is basically impossible. You're almost always talking through some third party, some recruiting agency, and getting reports, and you're not always in the room. Imagine... [42:30] building a startup like a [42:33] product from day one and not being able to sit right next to your customer and being like, "Show me how you do this," or, "Show me how you do that." It's incredibly hard. You're looking for such faint signal. The idea that you would try to get it through layers of indirection and games of telephone is... [42:54] is is crazy but at that scale that's what you have to do because there's there's all of these

[43:00] legal concerns and many other realistic concerns about what you can say to who and who you can talk to and what you can tell them about what you're doing and all of these things. So creating an environment where [43:11] where those sorts of constraints were lifted and were different was [43:16] very beneficial, I think, to the organization and kind of started to shed a light on some of the things that were broken that make it hard to kind of build zero to one in those in those sorts of environments. I also think it was a really fantastic recruiting tool. You know, it did build a really great group of folks, many of which have left to go start, you know, interesting [43:46] but I, [43:47] I guess what I'm trying to say is I think when you're an organizational leader, you're [43:51] And Shrep was the org leader that was supporting NP at the time, and he's fantastic and really did a good job of firewalling that team. I think you're looking at a set of objectives and a number of ways that you might help. [44:09] the company and the organization. And even if you set that light on the hill to be like, go find the next Instagram, many of the things that you would do along the way to find the next Instagram end up being very beneficial to the broader organization. We saw a lot of that in PE. [44:27] That's a really interesting perspective. There's a lot of [44:30] other goals with something like this. It's not just find the next massive business. It's

[44:35] the way I think you just [44:36] What I'm getting from this is like shine almost a mirror on the organization. Like here's the things we can't do with the regular organization. [44:42] business and we have to do something [44:44] We have to set this up in order to try something totally new and radical. [44:47] Recruiting tool you think is interesting. [44:49] There's actually a team at Airbnb. The way I described it was, I don't know how many people know about Burning Man and how it works, but there's this trash fence around the side that catches all the trash so it doesn't go into the desert. And I feel like there's teams sometimes that are the trash fence of a company. That's funny, yeah. Or someone's about to leave and they're like, no, go work on this cool stuff over here in the fringe, which is really interesting, but it's still within the company and maybe help with that. Just keep people that are awesome at meta. Yeah, and you're right that the team didn't. [45:19] kind of discover the next Instagram. For what it's worth, you know, things like threads and ideas like threads were in that team all of the time. I think that if that team caught the wave of generative AI and all of the opportunities and sort of like new technologies there, I think things could have also, because those are certain moments where you like having small, like really motivated, dedicated teams that aren't thinking about anything mainline can lead to like faster [45:49] I think that can also help. But there were a number of things that basically ended up becoming features in other products, and they were just easier, faster ways of validating and building them because you didn't have the constraints of like, [46:04] like the mainline product development organization, right?

[46:07] For someone that is thinking about trying to create a startup within a startup, [46:11] Something a lot of big companies are trying to do is they're [46:14] And a piece of advice or two. [46:16] that you'd share for helping this be effective. [46:20] Maybe one is just the goal may not be build the next big business. There's these sub goals also. [46:25] What comes to mind? God, there's so many. [46:29] And Shrepp did a really fantastic job of removing a lot of these constraints. So one is, I would say, think really hard about the incentive system. [46:40] Smart, good people, even if they're not trying to, they end up gaming things towards the incentive system. And so think long and hard about that. So for instance, if you're a large organization and you do some performance management process twice a year, and that's how you're going to evaluate and incentivize people in your zero to one incubator, you've already killed it. [47:03] It just like it's the wrong incentive. It's the wrong time frame. It creates adverse selection problems for the sort of people that you bring in. And so it's just it's hard in an existing organization to say, we're going to take all these company processes around even how we like level people and pay them and motivate them. [47:33] really well. Everyone got to do their own thing from an infrastructure perspective, just do what is best for the problem you're trying to solve in this moment, knowing that you're likely going to throw away a lot of this code anyway.

[47:45] Being able to do that in an organization like Facebook or Google, if you ask anyone that works on those things, is really hard. And it takes someone like a Shrep to be like, nope, they're going to get to do this. Sorry. And so I think that's really helpful. [48:01] For what it's worth, one of the organizations that we talked to that I felt like was doing this in one of the best ways was Nike. And Nike has this incubation lab and it's a completely different operating model. They recruit a completely different type of person, very different incentive system. [48:31] but for the product discovery process, [48:34] they're doing their whole [48:35] Whole different thing. Once they find some fit, then Nike comes in and goes, boom, I'm going to help you explode your fit. But I think that the number one thing I would think about would be the incentive system and the adverse selection that that can cause. [48:52] To me, the most important element of the incentive system, and maybe I'm reading between the lines, is [48:57] you're basically competing against them starting their own thing and, [49:01] having upside if things go super well feels really important versus I'm just going to get a cool salary meta and work on this thing. That doesn't lead to the same experience as a startup or everything's on the line. Yeah, and also what time horizons. When you're starting a company, you're not thinking, in the next six months, I'm going to get a promo and I'm going to get a good rating and things are going to go well. You're thinking on a different level.

[49:23] excuse me, time horizon, and you're thinking about an outsized impact or an outsized incentive. And so I would think about that if you're starting things internally as well. [49:34] Awesome. [49:35] Okay. [49:35] Let's move to the final bucket. [49:38] Grammarly, which is where you're at now. And the way I'm thinking about it is this kind of like a [49:43] 1 to rocket ship or I don't know 10 it's further along than one but [49:49] That's where you're at now. To me, Grammarly is interesting because it's one of the very few [49:53] successful B2C [49:56] subscription businesses. There's almost none. There's like Duolingo. [49:59] Grammarly, and I know you're doing B2B also. [50:02] But there's so few, there's so many dead bodies trying to, [50:05] build a business on top of consumer subscription. [50:08] And so... [50:09] I'm just curious, what's the current state of Grammarly? How are things going? [50:12] What do you think has been the key to it being successful all this time and continuing to grow? [50:18] And what lessons have you learned? [50:21] You just joined relatively recently, but anything you've taken away from that journey so far? We don't talk about it often, but Grammarly is a much bigger company from a revenue perspective than I think people realize. The company has been around for 15 years and was profitable from day one and continues to be quite profitable. [50:51] folks might realize. That is actually quite intentional because the company was trying not to be noticed for a long time, very intentionally. The fact that you would have a lot of people

[51:01] grammar and spell checking in Google Docs or grammar and spell checking in Word, people would often write off the company that like, how is that a business? How is that a feature? These products already have it. And that was very convenient for Grammarly because they could kind of navigate between these giants in tech and grow a very phenomenal business on this use case [51:31] advent of LLMs and it's no longer a use case that people are writing off. The dream of the founders, that machines can assist us in communication in this way that they've had for 15 years, I feel like now the whole industry is like, "This is obviously how we're going to communicate and machines are going to do all these things for us." Grammarly is now sort of [51:55] in the center of that hurricane. And again, I think it's a similar thing where it's like, well, you know, well, there's there's ChatGPT, there's, you know, Microsoft Copilot. Like, how is how is Grammarly going to have a chance? But yet, you know, things still seem seem like there's the future. The future is bright. And so to your question, I think. [52:17] to what has made it work. [52:21] I've only been here for 10 months, so please kind of take this with a grain of salt. But my instinct is that people really love Grammarly because of how it works and where it works. And what I mean by how it works is Grammarly is one of the few products where you just install it and it makes you better.

[52:38] Like you don't have to configure it. You don't have to manipulate it. You don't have to like change anything about like what you're doing. You carry on and across all of your applications, across all of your tabs, you'll start getting pushed assistance to you in the right moment. You could ignore it if you want. No big deal. But it takes a very, very small amount of effort to tap on one of those things, get some value and keep going. [53:04] And I think that a product that is like that easy to use, that easy to extract value from, but then also that prevalent, like how many different text boxes do you write in in a given day? I mean, it's a... [53:19] It is not less than 10, it is tens or potentially hundreds. And so it is everywhere and it is very, very low effort to get real value from it. And then the where we work is what I said. You don't have to change anything about your workflow. Grammarly meets you where you are and you get value from it. [53:41] Doing that really well at this level of quality for a user base of this scale, essentially, it's like a huge AI achievement masquerading as a little UX innovation. Right. But that experience, that UX that sort of brings AI to the masses is obviously a... [54:05] served Grammarly really well. I think those are some of the strengths that we're going to continue to lean on to now provide a very different type

[54:15] of assistance and value that we can because of where the technology has moved. [54:21] The other thing I've heard a lot about Grammarly, and Yuri was on the podcast and who led growth for a long time at Grammarly, is just how scrappy the business has been and the founders have been from the beginning. The fact that they've been profitable. [54:31] from the beginning, that feels like one of the threads through all of the successful [54:36] consumer subscription companies is super scrappy, not raising money for a long time. [54:40] Is there anything there that you found to be really interesting or helpful for other folks that are maybe building the space? When you're a team that starts out of Ukraine and you're not thinking that there's any chance that you're going to raise money and why would you do that? [54:56] I mean, it really, back to our previous conversation of what happens when growth goes negative, really forces you to focus on the important things. And so like many of the early engineers who are still here, because the company has done so well over the years, they think in like, how is this work going to translate into revenue? [55:19] right? They think about the impact on the business from even very deep technical work that they're doing because I think they were brought up in this culture where the business doesn't really invest ahead of its profitability because it was a bootstrap business from day one. So that enforces [55:42] everyone to think about their projects and their prioritization and how is what they're doing over the next two months going to actually turn into more revenue and keep the company growing and sustaining. So I think that that culture is prevalent and help Grammarly get to where it is. Now, I just want to be really honest that

[56:02] in moments that we're in today, that can also be detrimental, right? Because the business gets to a certain size, you start getting to kind of like law of large numbers, you need to start thinking about, are there other products? Are there other use cases? Are there other channels of growth? How do you kind of invest ahead of some of that growth and start to diversify? Because [56:32] have to do many more things and service many more different types of customers. And as you mentioned, we're going to have to pull off the motion of B to C to B, kind of get that product-led sales motion going. So all of those things are happening. And thankfully, the business is as strong as it is where we can invest ahead now in those things while still maintaining profitability and a really strong business. [56:57] That's amazing that there are still team members and maybe I think you said engineers from the beginning 12 years later. I think that says a lot about the business. [57:05] And before we started recording, they're based in Ukraine. And you were saying that, [57:10] They're going to Zooms. There's bombs going off. They have to go into bomb shelters. [57:15] and then jump on a meeting. It's incredible that the team continues to operate and the business continues to do this well in spite of all that. [57:22] Yeah, the team in Ukraine at Grammarly is... [57:27] I mean, it's something else. It's a really fantastic team. And when you speak to many of them,

[57:35] I think actually that the work provides sometimes a very useful distraction, but they obviously feel a lot of pride in the business. They built a lot of this business. There aren't yet... [57:50] many businesses of this size that come from Ukraine. And yeah, I think that team is incredible and continues to deliver a ton of impact to the company, even in the circumstances. [58:05] that they're in. And I know for the, for the founders, you know, a lot of like why they want, you know, Grammarly to succeed and be the generational company that it can be is, is for Ukraine. And especially in this moment, it's, it's awesome to see how, how that motivates them. And, you know, 15 years on the same project is, is, you know, not nothing. That's like, that's some serious resilience. And so I think even in moments like that, using them as a way to motivate people, [58:34] and strive for something greater, I think, says a lot about the founders and the team in Ukraine. [58:40] Absolutely. [58:41] Hopefully, there's a happy resolution soon there. I don't know if you know this, I was actually born in Ukraine. [58:48] in Odessa. I don't want to talk about that much, but it's true. And I just realized we both have skis in our last one. Levinsky and Rachitsky. [58:55] So for what it's worth, my dad was born in Ukraine. He's from Kiev. My mom was from Lithuania. So, yeah, I also have some Ukrainian background here. [59:05] All right. This is our Ukrainian episode. Yes. Let me zoom out a little bit and...

[59:10] get to the final couple questions. So... [59:13] Thinking about your career broadly, [59:15] I'm just curious if there's any... [59:18] general advice you share with people to [59:21] help them [59:23] have a more successful career. [59:26] Anything that is generally fine is really important to do well. [59:29] or mistakes they make? And this is a big, broad question, but anything come to mind? [59:34] You should really try to do more of or less of. [59:37] Look, when you're thinking about like, [59:39] career opportunities and what job to take. [59:44] It's really, really hard to sniff out really well in a high degree of certainty that, [59:50] like success. I think that like having a good nose for people and the sort of like people that, that you can be successful with is something that you can develop. What, what I found is I always try to prioritize putting myself in positions that are going to cause a lot of growth and learning and growth and learning can be very painful. Um, and you kind of like, you, [1:00:13] Gotta like [1:00:14] be okay with that and go into that because on the other side of that pain, I think is the promised land. And that's just served me really well is I can't necessarily predict, you know, with high degree of certainty that this thing's going to hit, you know, but I can get a sense of the people around me. And I certainly can find situations that are going to stretch me, [1:00:38] that are going to force me to do things that I haven't done, where I'm going to grow and learn significantly. And over sort of the arc of my career, I feel like that's served me well. So that's usually what I tell people is focus on that if you can.

[1:00:52] I love that advice. I've used this quote a number of times on this podcast, but something I always come back to is, [1:00:57] this line, [1:00:58] The cave you fear contains the treasure you seek. Yeah. [1:01:03] I'm curious if there's something you have found about when the pain is too much, when you shouldn't pursue that. [1:01:10] A lot of people get into these places where their mental health gets... [1:01:14] hit, their physical health is hit, they're just like doing work, they should not, that's like too much. [1:01:19] Is there anything there that you find is just like, okay, maybe this is too much discomfort? I mean, so I think about a couple of things. I think in any situation, you should be able to lean on like kind of one or two things that like, [1:01:31] you're really strong at. That can kind of be the foundation, you know, that kind of [1:01:37] keeps you going while you learn the other things. So just be wary of situations that are too net new. There should be one or two important things as part of that job going into where you're like, "I got this. I know how to do this portion of it." So as an example, [1:01:57] If you've never inherited a very large team and you work through how that works, but the product area that you're working on is one you're very familiar with, what's necessary to be good in that product, whether it's really good sense of design or really good sense of analytical thinking, recommendation systems, what have you. There should be a couple of those things where you're like, I got this.

[1:02:27] are going to be a stretch, but these things, I feel like I've got a handle on how to do this. I can always get better, but I feel like they're in my wheelhouse. And I think that tends to allow you to sort of like balance the pain with the areas that you already know and kind of manage through in a more balanced and healthy way. [1:02:48] Reminds me of that chart, I think, from... [1:02:50] flow of you want it to be challenging but not too challenging. [1:02:54] and that's where you end up being [1:02:57] most successful. [1:02:58] Is there anything else, Noam, you want to share or leave listeners with before we get to our very exciting lightning round? [1:03:05] Yeah, I just think that maybe going back to where we first started, Lenny, work on the things that make you happy, that fill you up. Life is short. We're all very lucky to be in this moment. There's no reason to spend time on things that don't give you energy. There's so much to do out there. I think that's the main thing I would focus on. [1:03:29] Amazing. And even though there will be things that suck that you have to do, [1:03:33] I think it's important to try to find as much of that as you can. [1:03:37] Right, because there's... [1:03:38] Not everyone can just like, nah, I'm not going to do this work thing. I'm just going to... [1:03:42] Go on a walk. [1:03:44] But I think that's such an important point, and [1:03:46] We talked about this actually a bunch on a recent podcast of just doing this energy audit where you pay attention to what gives you energy and what doesn't. [1:03:52] and try to do more and more energy. [1:03:55] We'll link to that again. [1:03:56] With that, we reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? Yeah, I'm ready.

[1:04:00] First question, what are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people? [1:04:05] You know, I'm going to cheat on this one and I'm only going to give you one. I'm only going to give you one because I don't want to clatter with any other. I recommend Build by Tony Fidel. And other than it being a good book, one of the main reasons I recommend it is that my wife wrote it. So she wrote it together with Tony and I got to see that experience. And she's a fantastic writer and Tony has a lot to learn from. So I recommend that book. [1:04:34] The part of it that was particularly inspiring to me to hear even more of the details that are in the book is just how many times he met failure before he made discoveries that are now driving so many of the things that we do. It's just a good reminder to keep at it and do the thing that really gives you that energy because eventually you can make that incredible discovery. [1:05:00] Next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show that you've really enjoyed? I really like For All Mankind. I've seen that on Apple TV. And then I just finished the last season of Fargo. And every single season of that series I think is fantastic. [1:05:19] Amazing. For All Mankind, though, last season, not as amazing. It's a consensus that I agree with. [1:05:25] But worth watching. [1:05:26] Next question. Do you have a favorite interview question that you like to ask candidates? You know, I generally like interview questions that allow us to kind of like do some work together. So I'm a little bit less on the behavioral tell me about a time when sort of stuff and more on the like, let's work a product problem together. Like, and it could be anything from like, let's design an alarm clock for children. Or, you know, lately I've been using one of like, you know, given, you know, where technology is at, like if we were to rebuild email,

[1:05:56] we do that? I just feel like kind of getting into it and getting into the details and really kind of [1:06:01] watching each other exercise our craft, I think is really important. I have a whole podcast one time, if you're ready, about how [1:06:11] Most people don't know how to do leadership recruiting. And I feel like as I've, you know, advanced in my career, like the interviews for some reason, like get easier and actually like evaluate less about like, you know, who I am as a as a product leader or whatnot. But yeah, those are the sorts of interview questions that I typically like. [1:06:30] Amazing. [1:06:31] Is there a favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love? It's not recent, but I was a very early user of ARK, and I really love ARK. [1:06:43] Your window right now is inside Arc. I also love Arc. We had Josh on the podcast. Nice. Just watching the onboarding experience of Arc alone as a product person is worth your time. I love the animation when you download something. I mean, just like all of the little things. And if Josh is listening, we would like to get Grammarly to work better with Arc. So please hit me up because I think there's a few things that the Arc browser is doing that make it hard to get Grammarly to work either on the client or in the browser. [1:07:09] Two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often repeat to yourself, share with friends or family, either in work or in life that you find useful? [1:07:18] Gosh, for those that know me, this is going to share so much of my personality. I think the first thing that comes to mind is we are meant to struggle. [1:07:26] I just feel like through struggle is how we get better, how good things happen, how bonds form. And so I don't shy away from that kind of life experience.

[1:07:38] I'm going to guess that you're Jewish. I'm also Jewish. That feels like a very Jewish thing to say. I love it. How would you guess, Lenny? It's literally written on my face. Yeah. [1:07:47] Yeah, perfect. [1:07:49] Last question. As the Chief Product Officer Grammarly, I'm curious what word you most often misspell. [1:07:55] The. [1:07:59] T-E-H. T-E-H, yeah, exactly. Oh, man. Yeah, yeah. Well, I find I misspell every word. I'm a terrible speller. I'm thankful for my... Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I would say I have a product for you that can help with your spelling if you want. I have... [1:08:13] I'm an active Grammarly user. Not only that, I use every product you've worked on, I realize. Oh, nice. Obviously, meta and mostly Instagram of the meta products. And obviously, Grammarly now and YouTube. I have a YouTube channel. Check it out. Subscribe and follow. And Thumbtack. My wife is a big Thumbtack user. We found many pros on Thumbtack from all kinds of [1:08:33] parts of the world. [1:08:35] Noam, thank you so much for being here. Two final questions. [1:08:38] Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out? And how can listeners be useful to you? Yeah, I'm pretty much no ML everywhere online. So Twitter is probably the easiest. My DMs are open. And then how people can be useful to me is, please use Grammarly. Provide any feedback that you might have. And honestly, if I can be helpful in almost any way, feel free to reach out. I often will take those conversations and build those connections. And that is always very helpful for me as well. [1:09:05] Noam, thank you again so much for being here. Of course. Have a good one, Lenny.

[1:09:09] Bye, everyone. Bye. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's podcast.com. See you in the next episode.