Building Anchor, selling to Spotify, and lessons learned | Maya Prohovnik (Head of Podcast Product)

[00:00] We were obsessed with reducing friction. This was like our constant battle. [00:03] And so we hired a couple of college interns and we brought them in. [00:07] And we were like, people are going to push this magical one button in the Anchor app, and they're going to say, I want to distribute my podcast. [00:13] and your job is going to be to do all that same manual stuff manually, [00:17] But to them, it's going to feel magical and like it happened automatically. I still don't know how many people know this. I think people think that we had some secret door, like backdoor deal with Apple for distribution. [00:27] But we just had college students making Apple podcast accounts and then submitting like hundreds of thousands of podcasts through these accounts. And I think that was a really big part of why we got so much hosting market share so quickly because it was such an insane thing. [00:41] benefit over the other platforms, which otherwise had been sort of commoditized at that point. [00:48] Welcome to Lenny's podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. [00:56] Today my guest is Maya Prohovnik. [00:59] Maya is Spotify's head of product for podcasting. [01:02] where she oversees product, design, and engineering teams responsible for building the tools and experiences for podcasters and their listeners. Maya was also employee number one at Anchor, which Spotify acquired about five years ago, which became the core of Spotify's podcasting hosting platform, which now powers over 75% of all new podcasts created in the world. In our conversation, we dig into why Maya is obsessed with dogfooding and why she encourages everyone on her team to create their own podcast.

[01:32] all very highly rated and people love. We dig into how she stays productive and organized in a very hectic senior leadership role, what she's done to allow for Anchor to continue to operate like a startup within a larger organization, also a bunch of really fun early Anchor stories including how interns uploaded podcasts to Apple and Spotify manually before they could automate that, plus how to find a balance between using your gut and using data to make decisions, also public speaking [02:02] to hear this episode. With that, I bring you Maya Prohavnik after a short word from our sponsors. [02:08] This episode is brought to you by Sidebar. Are you looking to land your next big career move or start your own thing? One of the most effective ways to create a big leap in your career, and something that worked really well for me a few years ago, is to create a personal board of directors. A trusted peer group where you can discuss challenges you're having, get career advice, and just kind of gut check how you're thinking about your work, your career, and your life. This has been a big trajectory changer for me, [02:37] With Sidebar, senior leaders are matched with highly vetted, private, supportive peer groups to lean on for unbiased opinions, diverse perspectives, and raw feedback. Everyone has their own zone of genius, so together we're better prepared to navigate professional pitfalls, leading to more responsibility, faster promotions, and bigger impact. Guided by world-class programming and facilitation, Sidebar enables you to get focused, tactical feedback at every step of your journey.

[03:07] to growth. A Sidebar personal board of directors is the missing piece to catalyze that journey. Why spend a decade finding your people when you could meet them at Sidebar today? Jump the growing waitlist of thousands of leaders from top tech companies by visiting sidebar.com slash Lenny to learn more. That's sidebar.com slash Lenny. [03:28] This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio. Your agency has just landed a dream client, [03:37] ambitious vision to life. Let me tell you about Wix Studio, the new platform that lets agencies deliver exceptional client sites with maximum efficiency. How? First, let's talk about advanced design capabilities. With Wix Studio, you can build unique layouts with a revolutionary grid experience and watch as elements scale proportionally by default. No-code animations add sparks of delight while adding custom CSS gives total design control. Bring ambitious client projects to life [04:07] from e-commerce to events, bookings, and more, and extend the capabilities even further with hundreds of APIs and integrations. You know what else? The workflows just make sense. There's the built-in AI tools, the on-canvas collaborating, a centralized workspace, the reuse of assets across sites, the seamless client handover, and that's not all. Find out more at wix.com slash studio. [04:32] Maya, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. You and I have been trying to get together for almost a year now.

[04:42] Oh, man, but it all worked out. It's going to be very worth it. You had a kid. I took parental. Oh, right. That is true. Man, overlapping kid journeys. [04:51] I also have been just really looking forward to this chat, probably because you're amazing. [04:55] And partly because it just feels very meta to have the head of product of Spotify podcasting on the podcast. [05:01] And I imagine many people are listening to this on Spotify. So there's this like, [05:06] I don't know, turtles all the way down situation happening. I totally agree. I was thinking the same thing when I was preparing for it, where it's like so much of what we have to talk about is so meta. And then we also have, you and I know each other because you've been sending me feedback about the podcast experience on Spotify. [05:20] Lots of circular stuff there. [05:22] Speaking of Spotify and podcasting, clearly you've done an incredible job building podcasting on Spotify. From what I've read, it's... [05:30] the number one podcasting platform now. Is there a stat you could share about just the percentage of the market share essentially of Spotify podcasting? I think we are now officially over a third of global market share of podcast listening, which is pretty insane. [05:43] That is insane. Also, I think on the hosting side, it's an even bigger number. Is there a stat you can share about just like maybe new podcasts that are launched and how many are hosted on Spotify? Yeah. So I think at this point, it's more than 75% of all new shows on Spotify are hosted with Spotify for podcasters, which used to be Anchor. When we were acquired by Spotify, I think Anchor had already gotten to like 40% of all new podcasts or something crazy. So [06:08] Yeah. [06:09] Insane. Okay, so for these reasons,

[06:12] I want to spend the time that we have together unpacking [06:14] how you operate as a product leader, [06:16] And essentially what you've learned about product, org, leadership, growth, and all those things, [06:21] How's that sound? [06:22] That sounds perfect. My favorite topics. Okay, let's do it. [06:26] So as a first question, I asked APM who actually works for you. Wilma Chu, what to ask you? [06:31] And the first thing that came to mind for her was [06:34] This idea of dogfooding and how important dogfooding is to your way of operating as a product leader. As an example, you have three of your own podcasts on Spotify, and I checked them out, and they're all very highly rated. So, you know, they're not just like bullshit podcasts. They're real. People actually listen and enjoy them. [06:50] So, [06:51] My question to you is just why is dog booting so important to you? How do you actually operationalize it and then [06:56] Also, maybe just talk about these podcasts that you have. [06:58] Sure. Well, I can talk about them forever. So be careful because I'll take up the whole hour with that. But I actually have four podcasts. There's two that I don't update as much anymore. So my first ever podcast was about Stephen King books. I'm a big Stephen King superfan. [07:14] So when I joined Anchor, and we weren't even fully podcast yet, if you recall, we were sort of like, [07:19] something else audio we were trying to avoid being podcasts for a while and then we decided to just be podcasts but when i got into audio and trying to help audio creators the first thing i did was make my own podcast because i was like i know nothing about production or what it feels to even be a creator in that way and so you know i started my stephen king podcast because that is the number one thing that i just love to talk about every day um which is one of my tips for podcasters if you're trying to figure out what to make a show about it's what can you talk about forever so i

[07:49] I spent a ton of time editing it, I spent a ton of time on SEO and marketing it, and it got to the point, I think at its peak, I was getting like 5,000 listeners an episode, which now seems small for a podcast, I know. That's very legit. Yeah, like for a test podcast that I was just doing to learn how to do my job, I was so excited to get that audience, and I fell off because, well, [08:08] Mostly like I had a kid, I joined Spotify, my life's really busy. And like that level of production is so hard to do if it's not your full time job. But I still get emails all the time from people who are like, please bring it back. I never found another great Stephen King because I really got deep into the books and like the connection between the books. So that was one of them. [08:26] The second one I did, I'm still going today. So my husband and I have this Big Brother podcast, the show Big Brother. It's terrible. I would not recommend listening to my podcast unless you are a Big Brother super fan. And I actually started that one because I wanted to get the other end of the spectrum where something we were really focused on with Anchor at the time was first time creators really growing the pie of podcasters. And specifically, we had this theory that the podcast creation of the future would be mobile first. [08:56] app. And so I was like, I'm going to make a podcast that's fully mobile, not highly edited, not worry about making something that sounds like a traditional podcast. And I really leaned into all the anchor features. So it's fully recorded on my phone. I do almost no editing. But I think the thing that's kept us going, because it's been like six or seven years now we've been doing the show, it's really the community, like the people who call in. I have no idea who these people are. I have no idea how they found this terrible show, but they love it. They call in every week. And

[09:26] app is like that community piece is so important. Like if you don't know if anyone's listening, if you don't know what they like about it, if you don't know if they're coming back, it's so hard to keep investing the time. [09:35] And then I made a show, my least known podcast, because it only got like 25 listeners per episode. It's about my favorite book of all time called Children of Time. It's actually a trilogy. And the reason it got almost no listeners is because there were tons of spoilers in the podcast. And the book is like 800 pages long. So we were like, do not listen if you haven't read the book. So it's very niche, but I think it's a really good podcast if you've read Children of Time. [09:57] And then my last one I just started doing a couple of years ago is about parenting. So I have a son who's two and a half now, and we sort of, [10:04] have been documenting our journey as parents all the way from we went through IVF, so starting with sort of like fertility. I have a really fun episode about childbirth if people are interested in that sort of thing. And then ever since then, it's just been episodes about the transition to parenthood, which has not been particularly easy for us. And now my son's a toddler. So lots of fun things happening there. You're not there yet, but you will be. And then you can listen to my toddler episodes. You got to listen to like the next few months ahead to learn. Yes. Yes. I think that's a [10:33] Before we talk about dogfooding, have you ever considered going full time on this stuff? There's always like an option for people. And clearly you've done great. At least two podcasts, you're killing it. [10:44] I have not, and I think it's just... [10:47] It's so funny because with my parenting podcast too and even my terrible big brother podcast, I get compliments all the time and people are like, "I love listening to this." My husband also is a really funny and a really good podcaster, but I

[11:01] I don't know why I don't think of myself as a creator. I think to me it still feels like this [11:06] exercise where it's like, [11:08] I'm making my podcast, but I'm really doing it so that I can like learn about our product and get in the mindset of a creator. So I think the problem is I'm just too much of a product person. Like it's more, it's a means to an end for me instead of the. [11:20] the end itself. But that is an interesting question because I, [11:23] I know most people who podcast, their ultimate goal is obviously to be able to do it full time. And that is interesting that I have a good backup plan of things, if anything. I guess so. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Just coming back to this idea of dogfooding, where does that come from for you? What have you learned about just how to execute that? [11:40] It's just always been my natural state. I've had a handful of different product jobs, and I guess they've all been sort of tangentially related to helping creators or creative people. And so I think for me, it's like, I don't know how you can build those tools if you don't understand that mindset. I'm not surprised that it came to Wilma's mind when you asked her what to ask me, because I am constantly yelling at my product team who do not have podcasts and being like, I really don't think that you can build the right things.

[12:10] But all of them, once they finally start doing their podcast, they're like, I get it. Like something clicked. And now I feel like I really understand. [12:16] what they need and i think [12:18] I guess like building tools for creators is similar to building a B2B product where you really have to understand it's someone's business, it's their livelihood. And so I think if you're just looking at [12:27] a list of feature requests, you're not necessarily going to prioritize it in the same way as if you deeply feel those problems. [12:34] And I think for me, I don't know if I mentioned this to you, but when I first got into tech, I started in customer support. Like that was how I got into product. [12:42] And so I think I just am a very, [12:45] user-focused product person. I think there's different schools of thought for product. And for me, it's always been about, you know, making people happy, making their experience better, solving real problems in their lives. And so for me, like becoming one of the users, I think it's made it so much easier for me to [13:00] advocate for that being a pretty big chunk of the roadmap. Because I think if you don't have that, especially coming from someone in leadership, it's so easy to just fall into that trap of like, well, we're working on the next big strategic thing, which is two years away. And then in the meantime, your users are getting no value, and then they're just going somewhere else. So I don't know, I think it's just, it's really important to me. It makes sense to me. And I also, I'm not sure how else I would do product. I've never really not done it that way. [13:25] Reminds me at Airbnb, Brian was a huge advocate of on the host side of the product is like you need to be a host. [13:30] But, [13:31] Many people couldn't because they didn't have a place that could be hosted. [13:34] Is there anything you've learned about just how to make this a thing that actually works effectively, a way to operationalize this for people listening? They're like, oh, I should I should start encouraging my team to do. I'm constantly reminding our team to do this. And then we I think that also comes from the other people who are doing it. So like we really elevate the people on our team who have their own podcast. We help them tell their stories internally. Whenever we do an offsite or like any sort of team activity, we'll always incorporate podcast creation or like some way of making sure everyone on the team is using the tools.

[14:04] comes from, I'm so vocal about this stuff. Like the other night I was recording a podcast and I [14:09] DM'd one of the engineers on our team and told him about this tiny little iOS bug. And he was like, why are you DMing me about this at nine o'clock at night? I think I was also supposed to be on vacation. I can't remember. But then it's like he got the bug fixed the next day. And so I do think making that something that's really top of mind for the team that we do need to fix problems, that these things matter. I don't know. I always listen to the podcast that my team makes. So it's sort of like I know they're going to get at least one listener. And then I think also I try to... [14:38] I think because I understand a big part of building tools for podcasters is understanding all the barriers to entry. Like it's actually a really difficult thing trying to get someone to. [14:47] put their voice out there, share their story. It's a really kind of emotional journey. And so I feel like I've tried to turn some of the things that I've learned about podcasting into, I've never written it down, maybe I should, but I have sort of a, like a playbook that I'll tell people when they're considering making their own podcast. So it's just things like, [15:03] Don't try and record by yourself. Find a friend. That's a much easier way to get into it. Or, [15:09] Don't follow a script because then you're going to feel really awkward and uncomfortable and not feel good about it afterwards. Or don't just record a test thing for 30 seconds and publish it because then you're not actually you have to kind of make yourself feel the pain that we're trying to understand in our users. What's cool about that is that could turn into just like onboarding education, like basically your experience of making podcasts informs how to help new podcasters become successful. Totally. Yeah. And I also I mean, one of my this is less about dogfooding, but one of my favorite things is like,

[15:39] that's just become my annoying thing. And so it's like if I'm interviewing someone for a job or if I'm at a party and mingling with people, it's like somehow the conversation always turns to their passions. And then I'm like, you should make a podcast about it. And then they're like, well, I can't. And then I work my way through all the reasons they say they can't do it. And then they go start a podcast. So I'm like one person at a time. I see how you're growing the platform now. Yes, exactly. Very unscalable. [16:04] Hand-to-hand combat at parties. Yes. I get it. Okay. [16:08] One thing you mentioned about being maybe the only listen of your co-workers podcast reminds me there's this platform where you could find Spotify music that has never, ever been played once. [16:18] and you could be their first play and just kind of go through. [16:22] That is so cool. [16:23] It's like very touching, right? Yes. I haven't seen that. And now I'm like, how can we productize that for podcasters? That's such a cool thing. [16:31] Anyway, another area that I've heard you're really strong at and came up with Wilma and a few other people I talked to is... [16:39] you find a really good balance between being very data driven and also very gut driven. [16:44] And this is something a lot of product leaders try to get better at. [16:48] And so... [16:49] I'm curious, just what have you learned about trying to find that balance? [16:52] And also, is there an example of something where you kind of went against the data and went with your gut and it worked out? [16:57] If you remember the old days of the internet, I feel like there was really this different way of thinking about product development where it was so much more about what felt good and what made you feel something as a user in that product. We used to be a lot more playful with software. I think we used to put a lot more emphasis on things like,

[17:16] delightful animations or like fun little easter eggs and i i'm not sure when or where that got lost but it feels like as product management as a um as a role has gotten sort of formalized and become a little bit more scientific i'm generalizing but i think a lot of product managers can be so focused on like using the right frameworks and making sure that they have the right roadmap and all of this stuff and then it's like you find yourself in this cycle where you're just [17:40] building things to build them and not really thinking about the connection to the end user. [17:44] I think data is amazing and I'm like, we have such an incredible insights team at Spotify, both my insights team and then the broader one. I think we are so, so lucky and we have so much. [17:54] knowledge about [17:56] our users and different cohorts and what people need and what they're missing. And so I think that's extremely valuable. I think where people get into trouble is when they think that they can rely solely on the data. And so what I spent a lot of time talking to my team about is how we can balance that. So thinking about, I guess, a couple of general things I would say are there are [18:13] right and wrong times, I think, for both for your gut and for data. And then there are lots of different kinds of data and different ways to use that data. So I think when you're in the trap of just sort of being like, well, this is like the process we always have with insights, and we're just going to run this every time we have a feature, like, I don't think you're going to have a great time. I think if you think of it as part of the creative process as a PM, where you're like, [18:35] you know, I have a hypothesis, I have some data that is helping me understand that hypothesis in the first place or form it in the first place. [18:41] Then I'm going to do some user research and like try a couple things and see what works for people. Then I'm going to make sure that we have success metrics and that we know like what we're looking for when we launch, then we're going to follow, etc. So it's like I think there's different.

[18:53] different times and places for like for all the different [18:56] types of data collection that you can do. The other thing I would say is [19:00] Something that I have had to learn as a leader, especially as part of a larger organization, [19:07] When we were a startup, Anchor was like 20 people when we got acquired by Spotify. And by the way, Spotify is my first big tech company. So I've always been at startups. So I've learned a lot about that. But when I was leading product at a startup, it's like, we're a small team. We're really focused on moving quickly. There isn't a whole lot of stopping to ask, what data is supporting this? Or it's just sort of like, we talked to some users and we're like, great, that's a problem. We're just going to go and fix it. [19:30] And I think at Spotify, there's obviously at places like Spotify, I mean, large organizations, there's obviously a lot more people that you need to coordinate. There's a lot of people you have to influence that aren't on your immediate team. And so I think something that I've had to learn is that [19:44] being gut driven isn't the same as just saying to people, I told you so, or like, I believe this, so you have to do it. There really is an art, I think, to balancing that. And I think that what I try to do is always still as objectively as possible, explain why my gut is feeling that way. So it's like, [20:01] you can refer back to your years of experience or other things that you've done that have been similar. You can talk about your experience as a user testing this stuff. You can bring in stories and anecdotes from users to help back it up. And so I have found that that works, obviously, a lot better. And I think that in the times that either I have done this or I've seen other leaders do it where they're just sort of like, well, we're just going to do it this way, even if you guys don't agree or if the data says something different.

[20:26] those projects are always immediately doomed from the beginning. They're never going to work. You can't sort of drag all these people through something that they don't believe in. So I think that like, [20:35] I would think of your gut actually as a type of data, and I think it's a totally valid one. And it's just, I think you need to be [20:42] clear that that's what you're working with, but then it should be taken as seriously as any other data point. So I try and think of it that way where it's like this should all ideally kind of work together. And obviously the more data you have and the more types of data you have, the more convincing you're going to be and the more right you're going to be. So I think it all helps. There were so many of these in the early days of Anchor because [21:00] I don't even know, I don't think we had [21:03] a data scientist until we were part of Spotify. So I think it was just sort of engineers like, you know, running queries. But we, there were a couple times where we had to kind of like move, move anchor from like 1.0 to 2.0. And then from 2.0 to 3.0, we did these like, [21:18] big, I don't like to call them pivots, but sort of like evolutions, let's say, of our product or our strategy. [21:23] terminology also very important when you're trying to convince people of things. So I think when I was thinking about those big transitions for us as a team, [21:31] I think both times we had these sort of like big moments with our teams where we had to get everyone on board with making these big changes. [21:38] So with Anchor 1.0, I don't know if you remember, but it was like actually similar to what Clubhouse, I think, just rebranded to like more. [21:45] sort of like voice messaging and short form and like more about connections between people. [21:50] And that was the first thing we ever launched. And people loved it. Like people were very excited about it. The data was all good. Like we had extremely retained users. Anecdotally, we were hearing all this stuff from users all the time that they were like,

[22:03] staying up all night to use the app, people were meeting each other and falling in love and getting married on our platform, like all of these really kind of magical things. And we were seeing like the user base was growing consistently. But I think we had this feeling and when I say we, I mean, mostly like Mike and I at the time, Mike was our CEO. [22:21] that it just wasn't ever going to be big enough. And so, [22:25] we had this really interesting moment where the users were all telling us there's no problem like we love this product they were using it every day they were coming back it was slowly growing and we were just like this just isn't going to get us to where we need to be like our original goal had been we wanted to democratize audio we wanted to make it something where anyone could easily tell their story and we were like if we keep [22:46] sort of digging ourselves into this niche that a small number of people really, really love [22:52] that's great, but that's not really the mission that we set out to solve. And so the 1.0 to 2.0 transition was, I think, actually pretty painful because for all of those people who had been invested in 1.0, 2.0 didn't work for them. 2.0 was much more about content creation and making more of a radio station. And it was less about [23:10] telling your personal story and sort of close relationships and more about kind of projecting and using different tools anyway. So we made that call, I think, pretty much just on gut. And it was like, this is a business decision. Like, this is where we think the next phase needs to be. When we built Anchor 2.0, it was a lot more like the tools that we wanted to use, even though it wasn't what the user base was asking for. [23:32] So I think that's one example of like,

[23:34] sometimes your users are not going to, it's that whole like users don't always know what to ask for. They don't always know like what problems they need you to solve for them. And so I think you really have to be able to like, [23:44] hear what's behind it or really like, [23:46] Even if the data is looking okay, think about if it's heading to where you need it to go. Before you move on, that's actually such an interesting story because... [23:55] It's so hard to have a product that's working that people love and decide to change it completely. [24:01] Many founders have been [24:02] are probably stuck in this where they're just like, "Hey, this is sort of working, [24:06] were feeling some fit. Is there anything else you learned from that? Because that's a really interesting insight and it worked out in your case, clearly. It absolutely worked out. I mean, I think it was [24:14] It was a terrifying transition, [24:17] It took us at the time, it took us a few months to build a whole new app. It takes longer now. But the whole time we were building it, we weren't sure if it was a mistake. And we would go back and forth and we would... [24:27] feel guilty when we were talking to our users about what they wanted us to be working on but [24:32] I think it was one of those things where as soon as we launched 2.0, it's like our numbers started shooting up and we started seeing like, [24:39] more kinds of people were using it and people were suddenly using it in the way that we had always imagined, like sort of as a replacement for the old school, you know, like, [24:47] very difficult to make traditional podcasts. I don't know. I guess the lesson is, [24:53] you have to be able to sort of [24:54] tell the signal through the noise and even if you've got lots of vocal users asking for something we used to have this rule um the 80 20 rule where it's like you can't just build for that 20 i don't think we made this up by the way i think this is a common thing but we would always refer to it and say like we want to be building for the 80 and even though the 20 are going to be more vocal that's just going to like get you deeper into that hole of like that problem of you're not really building for everyone

[25:18] And I think particularly when you're trying to build [25:21] a creative platform, you're trying to democratize something and your target user is everyone on the planet, I think you really have to be willing to kill your darlings and let things go when they're not getting where you need them to be. [25:35] That's probably the most common case is something is working. [25:38] But it's not working incredibly well. [25:39] What do we do? [25:40] And so that's really interesting. I feel like the first thing you said there is really important of just like we had a much bigger mission and vision. [25:47] And even though this is working, this is never going to get there. Like, there's no path. [25:50] to building. [25:51] a massive business. I do think that's so important. And I give a lot of credit to Mike and Nir, our co-founders, I think, where they really knew what they wanted to do when they started the company. And they were they were very firm on that and never, never varied that throughout the years throughout the acquisition. And so I do think [26:07] Not everyone's goal is to build like a massive, you know, multi-billion dollar world changing business. Like that's OK if that's not your goal. But if that is your goal. [26:16] you know, [26:16] you have to stick to it and you have to, it's really hard, but you have to keep pivoting to get to where you want to be. [26:21] Kill your darlings. I love that phrase. I use it all the time. [26:24] I think you had a second example. I have a couple other questions about Anchor, but did you want to share another? Sure. I can just quickly. My second example was, so we actually had to do it again. So we went from Anchor 1.0 to 2.0. We were like, that was totally the right call. And then Anchor 2.0, [26:37] We were still in this phase where we would always joke about it because people would be like, oh, it's kind of like making a podcast. And we would be like, it's not a podcast because we're trying to be bigger than podcasts. Right. Because we were like at the time, 2015, there were still so few people podcasting. It was still so, so hard to do. And so we originally were really stuck on this idea that like podcasting was going to be limiting and that we wanted to be the next thing. In the early days of Anchor, we had all this like nautical terminology. So we would call them podcasting.

[27:03] waves and I don't remember what else, but we had like cute nautical terms for everything because we were trying to resist podcasts and podcaster and those things. [27:11] And when we launched Anchor 2.0, we started getting all of this really great traction. And the number one feature request that we got from people is they were like, great, I love using these tools. And then I want to export it as a podcast and publish it, you know, and get people listening that way. And we resisted it for probably... [27:26] I don't know, six months or something. And we were like, absolutely not. That's not what we're doing. [27:30] And I think that one was such an interesting lesson because we had just sort of learned that we did the right thing by not listening to our users. So for a while we dug in and we were like, that's not the direction we're going in. They don't know what they actually want. And then when we decided, you know, I think we started with like, oh, we'll do a little test and let people export as podcasts and see what happens. And when we look back at our data, that's the moment when we saw the beginning of that hockey stick growth where it's like we had been growing, we had been doing well. And then you zoom out and you're like, OK, that was very clearly the thing we were missing. [28:00] We had to sort of like stop what we were doing. We rebuilt the entire app. We built it around... [28:04] RSS and podcasting and being able to export. And we actually did some really cool things to make it really easy for people to publish their podcasts everywhere. And yeah, so I think that was really the moment that it took off. And [28:16] I think it's so interesting putting those two things together because it was kind of the opposite thing the second time that we had to [28:23] give up on a piece of what we had thought was so inherently true about our business. And so I don't know what lesson to tell people to take away from that other than like, I think you have to just stay, especially in a startup mentality, like you have to stay willing to be

[28:39] flexible and like take in new information and new data points like as your product matures and as your user base changes there's going to be new things that you learn that are going to change how you think about it and i think again like the one thing that was unwavering for us was our mission and everything else was kind of mutable for us where we were like whatever we need to do to get there will work [28:56] And I do think looking back, it's kind of [28:58] astonishing how brave we were that like we kept sort of finding some product market fit and being like nope that's not enough and then moving to the next thing uh and i i think that obviously yeah worked out really well for us and meant that we were able to do what we set out to do and really democratize the medium and make things a lot easier for a lot more people [29:15] I think another lesson there is just, like, try stuff. Like you said, you tried this export thing. Let's just see what happens. Like, no, we don't think this is where we need to go, but let's just try it and maybe... [29:23] Maybe it'll work. And clearly that became... [29:25] the core of the product platform. Totally. And you also never know which of those tiny product changes are going to end up being this existential moment for your business. You really have to kind of keep your eyes open and be ready for that to happen anytime, especially when you're still trying to figure out where your place is going to be. [29:41] You mentioned there was this feature that made it easy to distribute your podcast, and this touches on... [29:45] A question that actually asked Mike. [29:47] the CEO of Anchor, what to ask you? And he's like, [29:51] Ask her about the story of how you made that actually possible to distribute the podcast to platforms, and it ended up being a very unscalable solution. [30:00] One of our our principles from the very early days of Anchor was build things that don't scale. [30:06] where we were like, we're a ridiculously tiny team. We're trying to do this really big thing. We had raised very little money. And so we were always just trying to figure out like,

[30:15] how can we sort of hack into whatever like growth we're trying to make happen [30:20] So when it turned out that people wanted to distribute their podcasts everywhere, [30:25] It's gotten a little bit easier, but at the time, I'm sure you remember what podcast distribution was like, where it's like, [30:31] There's all of these different podcast platforms. You have to manually distribute to all of them. Apple podcasts in particular can be really difficult for people who aren't tech savvy because there's this whole like you have to prove that you own your RSS feed. You have to know what an RSS feed is. You have to sometimes deal with 301 redirects. There's just all this stuff that's like [30:48] deeply technical in a way that we were just like, it doesn't need to be. [30:50] And so one of the steps there was to submit your podcast to Apple Podcasts, you had to have an Apple ID. And there are a lot of people in the world who don't have iPhones. And so we're building for everybody. So we're like, how can we reduce that friction? We were obsessed with reducing friction. This was like our constant battle. [31:06] And so we had this idea to, we hired a couple of college interns and we brought them in. [31:12] And we were like, people are going to push this magical one button in the Anchor app, and they're going to say, I want to distribute my podcast. And your job is going to be to do all that same manual stuff manually. But to them, it's going to feel magical and like it happened automatically. I still don't know how many people know this. I think people think that we had some secret door, like backdoor deal with Apple for distribution. But we just had college students making Apple podcast accounts and then submitting like hundreds of thousands of podcasts through these accounts. And that... [31:41] resulted in lots of interesting [31:44] technical and relationship, uh,

[31:46] situations. It was a really interesting thing. And eventually, that didn't scale. Eventually, we stopped doing that, obviously. But I think that is such a cool example of like, [31:55] the importance of how you're packaging what you're offering to people where if we had said like [32:01] you request distribution and we'll have one of our team members get back to you in three days and let you know when you're on Apple Podcasts. That doesn't feel very magical or like it's really saving you any time. [32:11] if all you see as a user is you're hitting a button and then 24 hours later you're somehow magically on apple podcast like that was so much easier than manual distribution was at the time and i think that was a really big part of why we got so much hosting market share so quickly because it was such an insane [32:26] benefit over the other platforms which otherwise had been sort of commoditized at that point so uh it's funny now to think back on that but i i think [32:35] I think it's also related to we were so good at being willing to humor what seemed like stupid ideas and try them. And so that is something that I definitely recommend to product people is like, [32:46] you know, like let yourself have the silly ideas [32:50] We always talked about yes and, like when someone has an idea, like how can you build on it and think about how it might work instead of saying no, that can't work because. And so we had a number of those things where it was like, [32:59] nobody understood how we were doing things so differently. And it was just because we weren't afraid to do the [33:05] silly unscalable thing for a while. [33:08] I love that story. Touches on two things. One is I was just doing an interview around how to drive word of mouth growth and make that a big driver of your growth. [33:16] And the main message there is just make something remarkable.

[33:19] and knock people's socks off, that they're just like, "Oh, wow, this is crazy. I'm going to share it with my friend." And that's such a good example of that where everyone's like, "Wow, that was easy." [33:26] I'm going to tell all my other friends that are launching podcasts. [33:29] The other is, I wonder just how much of tech is built off of college interns, like the beginnings of companies or like how important college interns are to like technology and innovation. [33:40] Feels like there's always an intern story. [33:42] Yeah, I know. I think they must be. And for the record, we paid them very well. These were not unpaid interns, just to be clear. But no, I think it is amazing. And I think it was also such a cool opportunity. Like one of those interns actually is still a PM on my team today. She ended up converting to full time after she graduated. And I think it's, I remember, you know, like I had a lot of cool college internships and it's such a cool way to. [34:02] get exposure to industries that you otherwise wouldn't get to. So I would definitely recommend that college kids start with like, [34:08] It's okay if your first job is sort of like a repetitive, not very exciting thing, because if you do a good job, it will lead to something very exciting. I love that. Imagine a place where you can find all your potential customers and get your message in front of them in a cost efficient way. 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. [34:36] Two of my portfolio companies, Webflow and Census, are LinkedIn success stories. Census had a 10x increase in pipeline with a LinkedIn startup team. For Webflow, after ramping up on LinkedIn in Q4, they had the highest marketing source revenue quarter to date. With LinkedIn ads, you'll have direct access to and can build relationships with decision makers, including 950 million members, 180 million senior execs, and over 10 million C-level executives.

[35:06] specifically for B2B. In tech, LinkedIn generate a 2-5x 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. [35:22] 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. That's linkedin.com slash pod Lenny. Terms and conditions apply. So we've been talking about Anchor and I think what's really interesting about Anchor is it's one of the very rare success stories of an acquisition working out incredibly well. Like it was a small startup now powering, [35:48] two-thirds of all new podcasts. It's pretty insane. [35:51] So I want to spend a little time on just what worked in making that possible. [35:55] So let me ask first around the integration piece, just like how you... [35:58] integrated successfully and then I want to talk about just operationalizing, making it continue running successfully. Totally. Yeah. So in the first piece, just like what did you do right to integrate? [36:07] anchor into Spotify to make it effective and continue working? I think it's sort of a combination of luck and hard work because Spotify is genuinely an amazing company. I mean, you've met now a bunch of people who I work with at Spotify, including my boss, Gustav. It really is. It's an incredible company. They're Swedish. So like just their mindset about everything in the first place is kind of amazing. But they're also like, [36:28] I have been so impressed that they are the type of company that can still move quickly and make really big strategic decisions and strategic shifts like it never feels like they're slowing down. And so I think our way of working sort of worked with them. And then I think the other thing that we had to our benefit was.

[36:44] they really saw the same vision that we had. So it was like, [36:47] They also wanted to change podcasting and make it more democratized and make it more two-way and bring it into the future. And it was so interesting because when we started talking to them, we had, you know, both of us had this like chicken or egg marketplace problem where we had this critical mass of creators. They had a critical mass at that point of consumers. But if you don't have both on the same place, then you're still stuck with like the limitations of RSS feeds. And so I think we were both coming at the acquisition with the same frustration just from two different angles. And so both of us really saw that benefit in joining up. [37:17] Thank you. [37:17] So I think one of the big ways we were lucky is that what I've seen happen in a lot of acquisitions is you have sort of an idea of what you're getting acquired for and you get excited and really attached to that vision. And then when that vision doesn't end up. [37:29] fitting into the company's strategy, there's nowhere else to go. [37:34] And I think in a lot of ways, [37:35] Anchor did really well fit into Spotify's culture and their roadmap, but there were many things that changed around that initial vision. And I think [37:44] we were really good at making sure that we stayed valuable to Spotify. Like that was one of our goals when we got acquired, where we were like, we're, you know, we're, we're tiny startup people. And we're like, we're not going to get lost in this big sea. When we came in, it was like, [38:00] We were very vocal about everything that we were doing. We did lots of internal marketing and made sure people were excited. We built a lot of really strong relationships. We made sure that every team at Spotify knew about us and what we were doing. We were constantly asking how we could help other teams. And when the strategy shifted, which it has dozens of times since we've gotten acquired almost five years ago, we were...

[38:21] not like we just sort of blindly followed, but we were always like willing to get excited about whatever the next thing was and willing to be helpful and figure out how to make that work. And I think it actually goes back to the like, [38:32] sticking to the mission in the first place where Spotify and we want podcasting to be able to be a huge business for the industry. We think it's been held back by a lot of things for a long time. And so we've had various... [38:47] hypotheses about how we can get there and we try things and if something doesn't work we go on to the next thing but that like that [38:53] goal hasn't really changed. That makes a lot of sense. And I love the idea of just staying excited about the [38:59] what is happening. I think a lot of founders join and they're like, oh, it's so annoying to work in this big company. [39:05] "Oh man, we had this original plan, it's just not happening." [39:08] And even if you're not excited, I think it's effective to [39:12] communicate that you're excited and be on board and then [39:15] shift things in the direction you think maybe it needs to go instead. [39:18] Totally. Yeah. [39:20] Okay, and then in terms of operating within Spotify, [39:23] From what I understand, [39:25] your team is still very startup-y, and there's this really fast-moving mentality. [39:30] What have you learned and how do you do that? How do you make that happen within a larger company? [39:34] We've definitely slowed down a little, I will say. I'm always joking about when we first got acquired, I remember we had to do this spreadsheet outlining our roadmap and estimate are things like small, extra large, whatever. Spotify's definition of small was something like a quarter. I was like, "We've never built anything that took more than three months." Now we build lots of things that take more than three months. The first thing that comes to mind, so

[39:59] When we were a startup, like one of the first things we did when we were only a few people, we decided what our core values were going to be. [40:06] And I think they like maybe... [40:09] very trivially have changed over the years, but we essentially still have the same four core values that we decided on [40:15] seven or eight years ago now. And when we got acquired, we had a conversation with our team where we said, you know, [40:21] We're going to, of course, embrace Spotify's culture and Spotify's core values, but we're not going to forget who we are as a team. And I think part of what really and one of our core values, by the way, is move fast. So that's something that's like very deep within our DNA. But I think one of the things that helped with that is Daniel, Daniel Ek, when we got acquired, came and talked to our team, which was so cool and like so motivational. And one of the things he said to us was, you know, we had a reputation at the time for moving very quickly, even compared to other startups. Like we were shipping a new feature every two weeks. It was sort of insane. [40:51] not only do I want you to not move slower, like that's part of why we're acquiring you so that you can like move quickly. But he said, I also want you to help me teach the rest of Spotify, how to move more quickly. [41:02] And I found that so motivating because I think I definitely had that feeling going from startup to larger organization where I was like, [41:09] I had this fear that it was just going to be bureaucracy and things moving so slowly. And I really loved that that was one of his goals was that he was like, I want to make sure, you know, Spotify also grew really quickly. And he was trying to figure out how to how to help them keep moving as quickly as they used to. And so I think that's something that I really took to heart and that I've continued to remind my team of even to this day where I'm like, that's I think of that as part of my job here to help people think about how we can move quickly and what really matters and.

[41:37] I think at any large organization, there's obviously a lot more complexities. There's a lot more stakeholders. So to some extent, it's necessary to like slow down and be thoughtful. But I think the things that I always try to push people on is like the unnecessary things that slow you down. So I think that's what we spend a lot of time on both within our team and when we're collaborating with other teams at Spotify, because we work with basically everyone at this point. So I think that was really cool that he sort of gave us that that mission when we joined. [42:03] On that note, [42:04] Is there anything that has been a real challenge or... [42:07] become really annoying, just like real talk about the flip side of that. You know, everyone's always like, oh, it's all working out great. [42:13] Is there anything you could share that just like, oh, wow, that was really hard and we overcame it? [42:16] or a real challenge that we didn't expect. [42:19] I think that the downside of Daniel's advice, so one of the things he said to us, he was literally like, "Say no to all the meetings." You're going to get invited to all these off-sites and meetings, and everyone's going to want to meet you guys, and they're going to want you to come to all of these events and whatever. And he was like, "Just keep being anchor. Just keep doing what you're doing for at least the next year. Don't worry about what Spotify is doing." And on the one hand, of course, we loved that as startup people, where we're like, "Cool, we're going to get to stay us within this larger organization." [42:45] But the downside that we didn't really realize until like a year later was that we didn't really, we weren't really able to like build relationships. We had some culture problems where our team started to feel like, [42:56] because they weren't part of Spotify, they had sort of some existential [43:00] Like they didn't feel attached to the work that we were doing. And so for like a year, we operate on our own. We moved really quickly. We were able to get a lot done, but then I think our next phase had to be like really deeply incorporating into Spotify. And so like,

[43:14] we stopped calling our team anchor internally we started collaborating more with other teams and i think that is the [43:21] necessary trade-off is like the more deeply you're embedded the slower things are going to go but i think that has been really amazing for making sure that our team actually like [43:29] felt like a part of the larger community. [43:31] mission that Spotify was doing. [43:34] And the one other thing I'll say that I found pretty striking, [43:38] So Spotify, as you know, [43:40] I did a lot of podcast acquisitions soon after the Anchor won. And so I got to know a lot of the other founders and early employees who have been acquired by Spotify. [43:51] And something that I've found with them and just with other acquired founders who I've talked to since, I don't know. I feel like people don't talk about this enough publicly. Maybe people are somewhere and I just haven't seen it. [44:01] I think that people who get acquired, especially founders, actually go through a relatively deep sort of like, [44:07] depression and existential crisis after getting acquired [44:10] And I never would have thought like, you know, when you're talking to people about getting acquired, it sounds like such an obvious positive. Like you said, it's like this amazing positive exit. And it was like it was objectively so good for our team and for us and for our users and for I think for the industry. And I personally did not expect to go through that because, you know, it's like, of course you want an exit. That's what you're working towards that whole time that you're a startup. [44:33] And I've talked to a lot of these founders, and I think it is sort of a process I think that everyone has to go through because either you decide I'm going to stay here and I'm going to do this for a long time and I can make this work for me. Or you're like, I'm just a startup founder and this doesn't really work for me. I'm going to go do my next thing. And so I think to some extent that does sort of.

[44:51] some of the things we were talking about I think do [44:54] help shake out like whether people actually want to make those investments and figure out how to make things work at a big company. But I think the other thing that I found is just like, [45:03] I think there isn't enough support [45:06] for that transition. And I think that [45:09] For me, I've definitely landed on the side of I love working at Spotify. I now am so excited to be part of a large organization and building things at this scale. But I really would have loved to have been able to like, [45:20] talk to someone about it or understand that there were other people going through that kind of thing. So I don't know if you want an example of how it's not all rainbows and sunshine. I definitely think there were some dark times there. And I've since learned like, [45:32] Everyone goes through that just because [45:34] I think [45:35] just by definition, all the reasons that you start a company [45:39] are like, [45:40] that means your personality is someone who wants to be like having that direct impact and doing you know [45:46] having your own ownership and being able to make things move quickly. And that is just so different once you join a large organization. [45:54] Yeah, those are amazing examples. [45:55] I think what's interesting with startup life is eventually, if things work out well, [46:02] you will either end up working for a larger company, like that's a likely scenario if things go great, or you're running a public company, which is also extremely painful and stressful. Yes, exactly. Yeah, so the paths are hard no matter what you end up doing. [46:14] as much as you love that startup time. I actually went through the same thing when we sold our company to Airbnb. [46:19] I was just like, "Man, I had this life goal of starting a company."

[46:23] And now I've done it. And now what do I do? [46:26] And it was just like, huh, okay, I guess I got to figure it out. Right. It's like, who am I? And I think that the thing that I think for me, and it sounds similar to you, like, [46:35] I think I didn't realize how much value I put in [46:38] the actual day to day of like survival that comes with being part of a startup. Like that becomes almost your like your reason for being is like, I got to make this work and I got to keep the team motivated. And you're just like going, going, going. And then when everything is suddenly. [46:53] You're like, "Wait, what? What is my job now?" [46:57] I saw a tweet actually recently, I forget who tweeted this, that [46:59] CEOs that [47:01] exit and go on vacation end up being more stressed and less healthy than running a really high stress, high growth company. That is wild. [47:09] I get it though. Yeah. [47:12] Although I will say when I joined Airbnb and was just like the PM of our team working on one thing, it was like, this is really cool. I have to worry about everything all the time. I know. There's a really nice relief to that. [47:23] But yeah, there's like a life... [47:25] existential question of just like, wow, he did the thing. What am I? Totally. What else? Like, there's usually not like a goal beyond that. [47:31] Totally. What was it for you? Was it that? Was it the feeling of I had this thing that I was running and now I don't? I think it was a little bit the fear of being sort of like a cog in a wheel, which is not actually how I feel like now that I'm now that I work at Spotify. And I think the other was like, we were doing great. Like we already were killing it at podcast hosting. And I also it was just so fun, you know, like I really valued that like,

[47:56] small company, everyone knows each other, we're like doing really hard work, but we're also having so much fun. And I think it felt like I couldn't translate that to a large organization where I was like, okay, now I have to do things how they do. [48:08] And then I think what actually ended up happening is like, I actually love how Spotify runs their company and I'm still able to run my team the way that works for me. And so I think it just goes back to like, [48:18] knowing what you care about, sort of like being really solidly attached to your own core values, and being able to take that with you. [48:25] I think we're both examples of people that were started people and then realized it's not so bad working at a big company. Like I stayed at Airbnb for seven years. I was like, no, no way I'm going to be here for more than a year and a half. I know. Or a year or two. How long have you been at Spotify at this point? I'm going on five years. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, no, like I think this is just a. [48:41] example of its [48:43] You think you're not going to enjoy working at a larger company, but oftentimes it's actually pretty great. [48:47] Yes. For a lot of different reasons. Yes. [48:49] Shifting in a slightly different direction, just kind of thinking about leadership and [48:54] And... [48:55] what you've learned, [48:56] to [48:58] lead teams, lead large orgs, build products. Is there any just like, I don't know, frameworks or tools that you found to be [49:04] effective. The big one for me is Radical Candor. I know my team watching this is going to laugh at me because I talk about this every day. They're tired of hearing it. Have you read it? [49:15] I have. I love it. It's yeah, it's like my all time favorite book. And I think it just it really shifted for me how I honestly like how I relate to people in general. But I think especially with managing, giving feedback, being able to collaborate and sort of like, you know, push back in a direct way, direct and constructive way on on peers and that sort of thing.

[49:36] So I make all of my managers on my team read it. We talk about it constantly in our team. And I think that the general concepts for anyone who's not familiar is you need to care personally and challenge directly. And if you're only doing one of those things, you're not giving feedback in an effective way. [49:51] And the book just talks so much about the importance of feedback and how feedback is a gift, which I have now come to completely agree with. It's like, [49:58] Anytime I've given someone effective feedback, it's always well received, even if it's tough to hear. People want to get better and they want to know how they can improve. And so I think, [50:08] anytime that you can give them [50:10] specific feedback in a way that makes it clear that you care about them and want them to be able to reach their goals. I think it makes makes them stronger, makes your relationship stronger. [50:19] And I also think the one other big thing I took away from radical candor was when it comes to people like not underperforming. [50:26] it really reframed how I think about that because it's like people are not generally inherently bad or lazy or ineffective. It's almost always because the role they're in is the wrong fit. And so being able to approach the conversation in that way means that you can like come at it and in a caring way that lets them know you actually want them to be successful. And what I found is when you have the conversation in that way, [50:50] they're much more receptive to it and then you're able to either actually resolve the issues or you're able to help them figure out what the right fit is for them which i think as a manager is so [51:01] It's so inspiring to me because that means that you get to keep mentoring them beyond. You're not just saying, this isn't working. I'm giving up on you. See you later. You're saying,

[51:09] I'm committed to helping you throughout your whole career and like, let's help you find the next step, even if that isn't on my team or at this company. [51:16] Awesome. Yeah, I love that book. And you talked about the two. There's like this grid that the quadrants. Yeah, it talks about and. [51:24] Just to reinforce what you said, like the core is that when you want to give people direct feedback, but you want to make it clear you care deeply about them. [51:30] And I love that she talks about like, [51:33] If you do one of these wrong, here's what happens. Like if you challenge directly, but it doesn't feel like you care deeply. They're just, you're just like an asshole. And they're just like, ah, goddamn, you get really defensive. [51:41] I should get her on this podcast. How cool would that be? Oh my God. That would be my, she's like my, if I could meet one tech celebrity, it would be her. [51:48] Okay, I'm going to work on it. If you're listening and you know Kim Scott, let me know. I will try to get to her. [51:53] Anything else in that bucket of frameworks or tools, things that you find really helpful in leadership? The only other one, I'm not a huge framework person. I think this goes back to my gut thing. But the one other thing that I refer to often is I love the Eisenhower matrix, which is also known as the four Ds. So it's like, [52:10] do defer delegate delete like you have the also quadrants maybe my brain just works in quadrants i don't know [52:15] But I totally subscribe to that and that's how I do everything where it's like I write everything down. At the end of every day I go through and I either do delegate, defer, delete. And it really helps you clear a lot of stuff out of your brain. [52:27] Interesting. So, [52:28] So you kind of don't even use it as a grid necessarily? It's more make a decision on all the things on your plate? [52:34] Yeah, I do. I just use, I tried using the grid view and it didn't work for me for some reason. So I just use a to do list and then I don't let myself finish working until I've gone through anything I didn't get through that day. And then I know what I have to do the next day. So that touches on another area I wanted to touch on, which is productivity. I hear you're very...

[52:50] Get it. [52:51] being productive and making the use of your time. [52:53] I guess, one, where do you think that comes from? And then, two, just any other... [52:56] tips, tactics, tools you find to be really effective in staying productive. Yeah. Where does that come from? I think I am sort of OCD. I think I'm an overachiever. I don't know. It's really important to me. I think when my team says that I'm very productive, the feedback I hear from them is they're impressed that like, [53:13] they send me a doc and then I always read it. I think that's more about prioritizing my team and making sure that they're unblocked, which I take very seriously. [53:21] I don't know other tips that I would give people I write everything down because I think I'm one of those people I remember things best when they're written down and then I [53:29] I obsessively put things on my to-do list. Anything that anyone asks me to do goes on there, and then I have that method for organizing it later in the day. Do you have an app for this, or do you write it on paper? I use Todoist. I think you can use any, but it's the one that works best for me. I love using paper, but then if I don't have it with me, then I can't remember anything I have to do, so I've had to go digital. [53:51] Awesome. So it sounds like a big... [53:52] part of your process is just getting things out of your head and writing it down somewhere. Yes, I think that's huge. And I also think, I think if you're, [53:59] In any sort of job, I think most PMs have this where it's like so much of your job is actually like deep thinking and problem solving. I just cannot get that done if I'm like running through my to do list in my head. So I think that was a big unlock for me when I realized that I just needed to like. [54:12] Anytime I'm stressed, honestly, if I just sit and make a list of all the things I have to do, I'm like, oh, it's like four things. I can get those done. It's okay. Man, that tool of just making a list when you have things, you're stressed about all the things you got to do, just making a list of it on paper.

[54:25] I find it so helpful. Works every time. Have you read Getting Things Done by David Allen? [54:31] It's on my list. I haven't read it. Okay. [54:33] That book totally transformed how I think about productivity. You're already doing a lot of what he recommends. It's like this very old book and now he's just [54:41] I don't know, he's like a public speaker dude that just goes around consulting. But this one, it has very simple approaches to being productive in it. [54:48] really changed the way I operate and [54:50] You're already doing a lot of it, so I don't know how much value you get out of it. I'll read it. I love this stuff. A core concept is this idea of mind like water. [54:57] where you don't want to have anything in your head. You want to get it all out. [55:00] And then there's these systems for how to process all the things you're getting out [55:04] Totally. Maybe we'll get David Allen. We got a whole line. I know we have a whole hit list. [55:10] Maybe it's just a final question. You're good at so many things. Another thing you're really good at is public speaking. I was watching the last Spotify launch event and I was just like, holy moly, she's incredibly good at speaking. And this is something [55:22] I want to get better at and something I think 100% of people want to get better at. [55:26] So I'm just curious, what have you learned about being an effective public speaker? Anything that you could recommend to people if they're trying to get better at this? Well, first of all, thank you for saying I'm awesome at so many things. This is my favorite podcast I've ever been on because you're just complimenting me the whole time. So I'll take it. True. [55:40] I think with public speaking... [55:42] For me, the first thing that I had to do was decide that I didn't hate public speaking because I think it's just I think it's human nature. Like it is it makes sense that we do not want to be in front of a crowd and we don't want to be performing. And we don't like it's just sort of an unnatural thing that humans, I think, make ourselves do.

[55:59] I remember I actually when I was in high school, I had to give a presentation and I was like, I had so much anxiety, like I couldn't sleep the night before. And I remember I was getting ready for school that morning and I was like, I'm just not going to hate public speaking. Like, I just can't get through my life feeling this way. And so I just got up there and I had fun with it. And it was it felt so much better to not feel worried about it. So I think ever since then, I've been okay at it. And then I'm [56:21] I have gotten lots of opportunities to do like big scary public speaking things for Spotify. And so I think I've I've had to get even better. [56:28] I think my tips would be, my biggest one is probably reframing, you know, it's like everyone has this anxiety before they have to perform or they go on stage, reframing that anxiety to understand that the thing your body is doing is surging you with adrenaline to help you. And so letting that feeling wash over you instead of fighting it, I think has been so effective for me because otherwise it can feel like a panic attack. And so I think you have to be like, cool, my body's getting ready. We're excited. We're going to go do this on stage. Like that [56:58] really helpful. [56:59] I practice like a million times anytime I have to do public speaking. So I think everybody has different memorization tactics, different ways of doing speaker notes that work for them. And so I think part of it is you have to do a bunch of public speaking to see what works for you. So some people work best with no notes. Some people, I almost read like complete sentences because I'm a good, like I can enunciate things while I'm reading. So that works best for me. Some people like bullets and then they go a little bit off the script. But I think once you figure out what

[57:29] times all the way through once the speaker notes are final and it's like you can practice your exact delivery you can practice where you're going to put jokes in you can figure out what doesn't feel natural or where you're going to trip it up and then you can change the words that you're using and so i like to get to the point where i can [57:44] where I can remember like ad lib at least half of the notes that I have in there. And that way, I know I'm going to feel confident, like coming off script, I make a lot of eye contact with the audience, which I think makes them think that I'm not reading speaker notes. So I think I think that's really important. If you can stand it, which I can't record yourself or watch yourself in a mirror, I just like it messes me up more. But I think for a lot of people that can be really helpful to figure out where your sort of issues are. [58:07] I think the biggest thing for me, honestly, is that like the unfair advantage I have is if you really give a shit about what you're talking about, you are going to be such a better presenter because people are going to tell that you they're going to be able to tell that you care. And so I think even at a larger Spotify event where it's like I'm reading off a teleprompter and I'm reading sort of, you know, I'm marketing, but I'm helping write those words. And then the way that I'm saying them matters because I'm like, I'm talking to podcasters and I'm like, my mission in life is to make things better for you. [58:37] that benefit, I guess. Sometimes you have to do public speaking about things that you're not very passionate about, but I certainly think that that helps. And I think leaning into that, so like, [58:47] when you can, telling personal stories, letting the audience get to know you. I like to work some humor into my presentations. I think that can really help as well. That is awesome advice. I especially love the letting the stress kind of wash over you because that's like most of this

[59:02] challenges. Your body's just doing all this shit that's just like going to [59:05] Totally. Stress the shit out of you. And so the idea of just like embracing it, just flowing with it. Yes. It's a superpower. It's like, that's so cool that adrenaline works that way. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to try that. Try that one. Also, if you're nervous, you can put your hands above your head. [59:19] That'll help the blood. I don't know. It helps it go into your head or something. I don't remember. There's this whole power post thing that apparently. Yes, exactly. And I think it's been disproven. People are like, no, there's no data that shows that. But the blood thing, that's really interesting versus like psychological. Yeah, I think there is a real physiological thing that happens. That's cool. Okay, amazing. Okay, maybe as an actual last question. [59:40] What's happening in the future of the Spotify podcasting platform? Anything you want to share about where things are going? [59:44] A lot of the things that I talked about at StreamOn, for anyone who saw that this year, I think are still very much our strategy. So I think for us in general, Spotify is really focused on making sure that we can, we have a massive audience. We have 500 million, more than 500 million monthly active listeners. We want to help podcast creators reach that global audience. And so it's really important to us. I always tell my team the biggest problem that I want to solve for podcasters is discovery and audience growth. And I really think we can be the ones to do it. So I'm really excited about that. [1:00:14] So discovery, monetization, we're really focused on making sure that creators of all shapes and sizes can make a living off of their work. And then I think in general, we're working on so many cool things at Spotify to make podcasts a more interactive format, something that allows you to get to know your audience and connect with your fan base. We talked about a couple features this past year. I definitely can't say anything specific, but what I can say is there is lots of really cool stuff coming next year that I'm very excited.

[1:00:44] about and I would say for anyone who wants to learn more definitely sign up for Spotify for podcasters it works whether you're hosted with Spotify or not and you can start to get a sense of some of those features that we're opening up to everybody but there's lots more cool stuff to come [1:00:58] Amazing, mysterious, and exciting. [1:01:01] With that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? [1:01:04] Yes. [1:01:05] What are two or three books that you recommend most to other people? [1:01:09] Children of Time, [1:01:10] And I guess I would say It by Stephen King. I recommend a lot of Stephen King books, but that's my all-time favorite. Very on brand with your podcasts. Makes sense. [1:01:19] What is a recent movie or TV show that you've really enjoyed? [1:01:22] TV show, I'll just say, I guess, [1:01:26] Poker face was the last one that really blew my mind. [1:01:29] movies. I mean, Barbie was so good. And then I'll just give you like a lesser known one. I just watched this crazy movie from the 80s that was made the same year Home Alone was. This just got featured on a podcast. So I think everybody's talking about it now. But it's a horror movie about a kid who's home alone. And then he has to fight Santa Claus in like a home invasion situation. It is so good. It's called it has a bunch of different names. [1:01:51] But if you look up either Game Over or it's like Code Père Noël something, it's like an old French horror movie. So good. [1:01:59] Interesting that the other Home Alone is the one, like that did well. Well, there was apparently a whole legal thing over it. [1:02:04] Oh, wow. They didn't have Macaulay Culkin. That's their missing piece. [1:02:09] What is a favorite interview question that you like to ask candidates when you're interviewing? I have one it is if you could make a podcast about anything what would it be and it is the best honestly you should ask people that even if you don't work in podcasting because it tells you so much about candidates and one thing that I feel very strongly is that the most important thing is that you're hiring passionate people not people who are passionate necessarily about the thing that you're doing but about anything if they can't think of anything.

[1:02:31] I would. That's a red flag for me. That's awesome. It's like a variation of the question of talent. Teach me something or tell me about something that you've learned recently. [1:02:38] Really interesting tweak on that question and very appropriate. [1:02:42] Thank you. [1:02:43] What is a favorite product or something else that you've discovered recently that you really like digital or physical? Okay, very unsexy answer, but I love 1-800-CONTACTS. [1:02:54] I'm so impressed with their product team. If you need new contacts, even if you need a new prescription, you can do the whole thing online in like five minutes. And it's so well thought out and so thoughtful. I love them. And then the one other one I'll give a shout out to since becoming a parent, Love Every. Do you subscribe to them? Absolutely. So good. I don't know anyone that doesn't. [1:03:13] They've cracked it. [1:03:14] Yes. [1:03:15] Yeah, we... [1:03:16] We're missing some of the toys, and so we're trying to find where they went because he's [1:03:20] He's ready for him. He's ready for the rattle. Yes, awesome. [1:03:24] Yeah, I love every is amazing. And their ads are really great. Yes, they're so good. [1:03:29] What is a favorite life motto that you come back to often, share with folks? Anything there? [1:03:36] Only a fool wishes time away. [1:03:39] Thank you. [1:03:40] even if you're having a bad day even if you're doing something boring or you're stressed because you have to do public speaking [1:03:45] That's still your life and you should enjoy it. [1:03:47] I love that. There's this phrase of just like, I'm just killing... [1:03:50] killing time right now and I always think about that just like oh but you don't have that much time [1:03:55] Maybe you shouldn't try to kill your team, even though sometimes things are boring. It reminds me of another quote of just like most of the world's problems are caused by our inability to sit in a room for 10 minutes quietly.

[1:04:07] And also, if you're bored, have a baby because you'll never be bored again. [1:04:11] yep indeed speaking of parenting [1:04:15] What is a valuable lesson that your mom or your dad taught you? [1:04:18] My mom always told me that my generosity would be rewarded. So anytime that I was like, [1:04:25] nice or thought of someone else before me. She always made sure that I got like some little reward or got to go out for ice cream or something. I think that really worked on me. [1:04:34] I love that. [1:04:35] Final question. [1:04:37] I saw somewhere that you raised backyard chickens. Is that true? Oh, I'm so happy you asked me about my chickens. That's my reaction. So maybe just why did you decide to do that? Any tips for someone that may want to explore them? Oh my God. Well, we should have started with this because I can talk about this for an hour and a half, but I love my chickens. I have eight of them. We've got one rooster and seven hens. [1:04:56] i am just i think that all of us should be a little bit closer [1:05:00] to nature to the i was going to say the food that we're eating i'm not going to eat my chickens but they make eggs for me but i just think there is something very um [1:05:08] Lacking in our modern lives that like connection to nature. When I feel stressed at work and I go outside and I hang out with my chickens, I go, I like pet them and I give them treats and we talk to each other. It's like nothing makes me happier and like feel more grounded than hanging out with my chickens. [1:05:24] So I think everyone should have chickens. [1:05:26] I would say they're pretty low maintenance. So if you're thinking about it, I would recommend it. And if you get chickens, my favorite thing that I did for them, I got this monthly subscription box for chickens called, I think it's called Coop Crate. Love Every for Chickens. Yes, it's Love Every for Chickens. And every month they send me like chicken treats, but also like fun little things for crazy chicken people. So it's like clothes or like a sticker, like something funny. It's like, I'm very into the whole chicken thing. So

[1:05:54] Yeah. Oh my God. Maybe just a tactical question. How much space do you need in your yard for chickens? Not that much. So we let them free range. We have we have a pretty big yard. But I think their actual so there's like their little coop and then they've got a run that's fenced in. The run is maybe like. [1:06:10] I don't know, five feet by eight feet or something, but you can go a lot smaller. If you go to Home Depot, they actually sell like pre-made coupes and runs. [1:06:18] I think if you have a decent sized backyard, they'll be fine. I've known people with pretty small yards and you just let your chickens out and they're happy to just they'll find worms in a few yards, you know. [1:06:27] All right. New project to look into. Please do it. [1:06:31] Okay. [1:06:32] Maya, we've talked about chickens, dogfooding, gut level decisions, radical candor, so many things. [1:06:38] Thank you so much for being here. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out? And how can listeners be useful to you? I'm on threads, I guess, and I'm on LinkedIn. I'm Maya Fish on most social media, and then I'm on LinkedIn. [1:06:50] And then, what was the second one? How can people be useful to me? Exactly. [1:06:54] Listen to your podcast on Spotify and then send me your feedback. I would love to know either as a podcast creator or as a podcast listener. Always happy to hear what Spotify can be doing more of or better to help you out. [1:07:06] Amazing. Maya, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much. [1:07:09] Bye, everyone.