How LinkedIn became interesting: The inside story | Tomer Cohen (CPO at LinkedIn)

[00:00] I think it's so underappreciated, the turnaround that has happened within LinkedIn. Like, I check it at least 10 times a day. What was the strategy behind it? I step backwards. I was like, what is the potential here? If you start from the premise that LinkedIn ultimately is a platform for economic opportunity that sits on top of a very strong social graph, almost every aspect of economic transaction is possible. Is there anything tactically that just like, wow, that really made a big dent in people wanting to come here and post, share interesting content? To really set the new purpose for it, which was this is not a springboard for other products. [00:30] a traffic jumpstart. It's not an upsell feed. It's really about people that matter, talking about things that I care about professionally. The first thing we did was really making AI first. How do you actually like on the ground help people shift their perspective and think AI first? So it wasn't like, oh, we have this cool technology. What can we do with it? It was like, let go of what you've built, go back to the objectives you were trying to solve. And now with this technology, how can you do that objective better? There's so much I want to dig into here. Is there anything else you think would be interesting or useful for folks? AI is the [01:00] It's misunderstood. It's really about...

[01:30] and a place I check regularly. And he's also at the center of shifting LinkedIn to an AI-first mindset, which started way before AI became cool. In our conversation, Tomer goes inside the strategy behind the transformation of LinkedIn's feed and how they approached making it a place that people wanted to check and make it much more social. We also get into the one mindset that Tomer credits for helping him rise so quickly within LinkedIn. Also, why Tomer's most repeated mantra is, [02:00] not confused. And so much more. This episode is for anyone wanting to see what great product leadership looks like and wants to be inspired to think bigger. A big thank you to Shira Gassarch, Dan Roth, Josh Redfern, and Sparsh Argawal for question suggestions that made this episode so interesting. With that, I bring you Tomer Cohen. [02:21] Tomer, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. My pleasure. [02:29] So as I was preparing for this podcast, I reached out to a bunch of people that have worked with you and asked them what I should ask you on this podcast. [02:37] Interestingly, every single one of them said this one thing that I need to ask you, which is about this phrase. [02:42] that apparently you use all the time, [02:44] So first of all, can you guess what this phrase might be? [02:47] I have a few. Sometimes we'll call them Tomorisms, but I would be... [02:52] The word is, I might be wrong, but not confused. That's the one. Amazing. Okay, so let's talk about this phrase. We don't say it so much anymore. Okay. I think it's ingrained into the culture. I was going to say that. People think of me, they think of this sentence already. Those are the ultimate things where you don't need to say them as much anymore. Okay, so the phrase again is, we might be wrong, but we're not confused.

[03:10] Exactly. Let's talk about this. So what does this phrase mean and why do you find it so powerful and important to say often? [03:17] It's a simple phrase, but it has, in my opinion, so much depth into that. [03:22] Ultimately, something I really believe in, it's rooted in... [03:26] clarity and principles that ultimately lead to leadership and the first time [03:30] I got the inspiration from it. It was from a startup founder I met many, many years ago. Their company was on the brink of failure. [03:38] They had their last attempt. [03:40] And they decided on a path forward. [03:43] And after he decided on a path forward, he was still seeing people hedging in different directions. [03:48] And it kind of led into this confusion in the system where we decided people are still hedging. They're still trying out things they thought could work. [03:56] And he realized that [03:58] unless they basically all pull through in the same direction there is no chance they'll be able to be successful now pulling through in the same direction doesn't mean you're going to be successful but this gives you a chance of success [04:09] and that confusion in the system, only luck can save you. So that was when he shared that. That was very impactful for me. I think it's a good one for life as well. And for me, it kind of comes down to two main parts. One is [04:22] Clarity of thought. [04:24] and clarity of execution. And they're both equally important. [04:28] This episode is brought to you by Gamma, an entirely new way to present your ideas powered by AI. If you hate designing slides and dread that feeling of staring at a blank slide, Gamma is here to help. Just upload your PRD and turn it into a beautiful, ready-to-present presentation in seconds. Gamma works with all types of formats, from Google Docs, PDFs, to PowerPoint.

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[06:45] you [06:46] On the clarity of thought, what I find people to be attached to, especially when you build an environment with a lot of [06:53] uh kind of alpha types is that they get attached to being right or wrong [06:58] And that really creates a lot of lingering in the system, a lot of confusion, and they're still stuck to their ideas. And for me, I get attached to clarity and focus. I think that's much more important. [07:09] That's why I think when I say I don't mind being wrong, [07:12] It really comes from a humble place. I would rather go forward with everybody in some direction than [07:16] than necessarily try to hedge all the time, which will give me no chance of success. And the way we start, we do this in our product jams right now, is we actually spend some significant time [07:27] on what is the problem we're trying to solve for, but not high level, not like, hey, we want to launch this product, we want to launch [07:34] a video product is exactly [07:35] What type of video are you trying to launch for with audience? What is your unique criteria? What are you trying? What is very nuanced? [07:42] what you're trying to solve for. Ideally, [07:45] Once the time you see the problem, you know exactly the problem. You actually can imagine that mountain. It's not just a mountain. You can see exactly the road. You can see exactly the base camp. But then when you move to solution... [07:59] I love solutions that are based on first principles. [08:02] that they have [08:04] There's a principle thinking about it. There's opinions about it. If, [08:07] You talk to folks who work with me, they'll tell you I push a lot for what is actually your opinion, what is your... [08:14] potentially controversial opinion. And the best principles have teeth. So saying that we should build a simple product,

[08:21] For me, it's useless. Who doesn't want to build a simple product? [08:24] But saying that I'm willing to sacrifice or trade off this, [08:28] That's where I get excited. I'm like, okay, that's a very strong opinion. Let's go into that. Why were you willing to trade off? [08:33] those type of vectors to make it happen. And, [08:37] You know, one thing that I saw also in Clarity of Thought was, I came to the US in 2008, I came from Israel, our hobby in Israel is to argue, so we argue a lot, it's our love language in many ways. [08:50] And I come to the US and I notice people say a lot like, I don't exactly understand why. [08:57] Or, you know, I'm not exactly clear on this. [09:00] And it took me a long time to realize they're actually disagreeing. They're just masking it with a layer of misunderstanding. [09:06] Thank you. [09:07] And a good mentor of mine said, hey, just push back. Are you disagreeing or misunderstanding? [09:13] Thank you. [09:14] If you're misunderstanding, let's spend the night. Let's get to a point where you can articulate [09:18] my point of view, [09:20] in your words and i can do the same. [09:23] But if we disagree, let's stop. Why are we spending? Why are we wasting time just arguing it through? [09:28] So those became really powerful. That's on the clarity of thought. [09:32] Clark execution, [09:33] is even more important because many organizations actually reach a decision [09:38] They don't act on it. [09:39] which is it's one of those like shocking things they decide this is a top priority [09:44] but it doesn't make its way into the organization. And I'll give an example. [09:50] Like if somebody will say, hey, my top priority for...

[09:53] you know my business is this initiative [09:58] And then I'll say, but most of your engineers are working on this migration. [10:01] And they'll say, yeah, we have to finish that. [10:04] I'm like, so why don't you say the migration is my number of priority? [10:08] It's like, yeah, it's like, but that's exactly what you're doing. You have to make sure that what you're sharing as a priority is actually manifested in your resourcing. Then I'm like, hey, this is your top talent. Why is your top talent working on some moonshots? [10:21] that are not in your number one priority. [10:23] Thank you. [10:24] And this is where you start finding that it doesn't really translate into [10:30] uh execution as well and you can solve so much by just making that sure that focus is there [10:35] So the big lesson here is to push for clarity. [10:39] And, [10:40] push out anything that is unclear, confusion, either in thought and also in execution. [10:44] One of the folks that I talked to that worked with you about this phrase, Josh Redfern, [10:49] He said that this phrase became really liberating for him, which is really interesting to hear because it forces you to, [10:56] make a call and to be aligned and make sure everyone is [10:59] is on the same page. I guess, yeah, thoughts on just like why this concept is so liberating. It goes back to like kind of little alpha types or type A folks who are like just so attached to not getting it wrong. [11:12] You need to move forward. And it's not about being right or wrong. [11:17] It's really about not being confused and making sure everybody is pulling the same direction. That is actually really liberating. [11:22] And when you know that the whole idea is to have a Socratic conversation about what you're trying to do,

[11:29] Then coming to the table with some kind of half-baked ideas or... [11:33] or actually not an opinion, [11:36] I think actually brings into a conversational feedback. But you have to manifest it through. If you just play this through, but then you [11:43] potentially playing the right or wrong game, that's really poor. [11:46] I also think it's the best way to learn. Like, if you don't know exactly what you're doing, how can you learn back from why you made that decision? [11:53] So if you had a clear understanding, ultimately, it's a growing organization. This is not a one-off project. We're going to build many projects in the future. [12:01] So if you're not sure about what we're trying to accomplish, [12:04] How can you know what you learned from it? [12:06] I love that. So the idea here is make it very okay to be wrong. [12:10] but make it not okay to [12:13] be confused and not clear about here's what we're doing, here's why we're doing it, everyone's aligned exactly on the same [12:19] How can I have a... [12:21] Point of conversation if I'm not sure what you stand for. [12:24] It's really hard to have a Socratic conversation. Really hard to have. If you ask folks, how many times you left a meeting, [12:33] in kind of corporate it could be a startup or like larger companies and you're not sure exactly [12:38] What was the problem discussed? [12:41] What are the next steps? [12:42] more often than not, they'll raise their hand. [12:44] That for me is a waste of building time. [12:47] So that actually agitates me in another great way. But when I come in and I'm... [12:54] proven wrong or there's a strong challenge or argument. Again, that's

[12:59] a little bit my love language. I actually enjoyed those. I think we leave the conversation much better. [13:04] You said there's some other tomorisms. What are some others just... [13:08] that you can share. [13:10] This is, again, this is classic to-- [13:13] building in large organizations but i actually believe in [13:17] especially when it comes to products to... [13:19] really set ambitious goals but then try to over deliver on them. [13:23] like really set, like, [13:25] What are you trying to do? It's almost like the opposite. People are underplaying it and overdelivering it. I don't understand what you're trying to do. [13:32] For me, it's like we are here to make an impact. We're here to really set our goals to something really massive. [13:39] and i'm trying when i'm trying to visualize this like i see a mountain you see the peak and you know the peak exactly how it looks like you see base camp you know how to start [13:48] And maybe the middle of the mountain is kind of blurry. [13:51] but you'll figure this out. But at least you know the pick you're trying to share. Share the pick. [13:56] Share where you're headed to. And I think it's just a much more exciting way to build product. It's a much more inspirational way. [14:03] for folks to be part of the product person. I was just chatting with Vlad, who worked at Airbnb for many years. He was actually my former manager at Airbnb, and he reported to Brian for a long time, and we talked about this. [14:14] A trait that Brian also is really good at is just setting crazy high goals, like 10x the goal that you thought you had, what would it take? [14:20] And it works really well for Airbnb. [14:22] So I love that you're kind of doubling down on the same idea. Is there an example that comes to mind of one that you, like some ambitious goal you set internally at LinkedIn?

[14:31] that people are like, no way. And then it ended up being [14:34] effective. Actually, there's a lot. When I think about our LinkedIn feed [14:39] and thinking about like, you know, when you started off, it was hard to imagine [14:44] what that product could be because it was more of a promotionally nature product. [14:49] And I was like, no, this is going to be a place where millions of people, and not just tens of millions, will come daily. [14:56] Thank you. [14:57] And that's insane. That makes no sense based on the numbers today. But I don't start building from the numbers today. I start from work. [15:03] I start backwards. I was like, what this could be? What is the potential here? So how many professionals exist in their role? How many of them would love to find a place to share and engage with content? And this is my starting point. I start from there. [15:17] uh so i don't start from the [15:21] existence to set my ambition I start from like what this could be like based on really inspiration and excitement. [15:30] Again, it's not detached from reality completely, but it's also not hooked to it. But then Basecamp [15:35] could be a good start. Like, you know, you're not asking you to make it the next day. [15:41] But if you don't have that ambition, there's no way you're going to hit that. [15:44] There's just no way. And there's so many products across LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a 20 plus year old company. [15:50] that many folks did not give it a chance in almost every phase of it. [15:55] And I think if anything, it's one of those that just keeps getting better and better every year. [16:00] And part of it is you keep the landmark on

[16:04] This really has the potential to do so much for so many people. It's really an economic platform. So if you play from that, like... [16:13] 1 billion members, that's actually pretty small where we can actually go. [16:17] I'm so happy you went to this example. This is exactly where I wanted to take the conversation. [16:21] I was very much in the camp you described of [16:24] LinkedIn, how could LinkedIn possibly become a place that I want to go and browse a feed and [16:30] Post. [16:31] content. As you probably know, for the longest time, it was felt like this cringey place, as you said, where everyone comes and promotes themselves. Hey, I got a promotion or here's my company's new launch. [16:41] And it's I think it's so underappreciated, the turnaround that has happened within LinkedIn. Like I use it. [16:47] I'm a multi-DAO user. I check it at least 10 times a day. [16:51] most of my traffic to my newsletter. [16:54] Comes from LinkedIn, not Twitter. [16:56] where people think it's absurdly underappreciated and it's, I think, underappreciated what it took to make this happen. [17:02] When I saw you guys starting to try to make it a place people post content, I was like, no way, this is not going to work. [17:07] Why would people want to share stuff on LinkedIn? And it's working. It's amazing. So I want to spend some time here and just kind of try to go inside the strategy that you guys put together to here's how we're going to make this happen. Come, you shared, you had this peak of like, here's what we could become. How did you actually turn this around? What was the strategy behind it? [17:26] Yeah, I'm glad you're finding great kind of audience and traffic on LinkedIn. I think your content, actually, your content is exactly what we're trying to build for. It's expertise, it's advice, it's people you can learn from.

[17:39] and it's also the views that really matter, not just the volume that matters. I think if you take a step back, [17:46] There's so much conversation about zero to one products or scaling products, [17:51] but you don't have much conversations about minus one to run products, like turnaround products. And I think there's obviously the perception of the market you have to deal with, but people [18:01] I think in minus to one product, at least from my experience, and we had a few at LinkedIn, [18:05] Pages is another one helping businesses build their presence on LinkedIn. [18:10] What you find is actually most of the time it's internally harder to do because there's so much entrenched flows and processes and metrics that people are using. [18:19] on that specific area. So you almost have to change the inner workings of the system to make it work. [18:26] Going back to the analogy of the mountain, if you start from the premise that [18:31] I deeply believe in is that LinkedIn ultimately is a platform for economic opportunity. [18:36] that sits on top of a very strong social graph [18:39] then really [18:41] Almost every aspect of economic transaction is possible. [18:45] A knowledge transaction is one of the most powerful economic transactions you can have. It's the biggest accelerant. [18:50] for an experience. And we were always very strong at helping people [18:54] you know get a job we have seven hires per minute [18:58] But as we were building more and more knowledge, and part of it was we bought LinkedIn Learning, we bought Lingda to make it LinkedIn Learning. [19:04] a while back, we had 140 [19:06] hours of learning every minute on LinkedIn happening across the feed and LinkedIn learning.

[19:11] it's pretty it's pretty powerful and the transformation to the linkedin feed [19:16] was exactly like you said. We [19:18] We actually were the first [19:20] company to have a social feed. But I think we started wrong. So we started with basically activity feed. So it was like who changed what, who changed the job, who connected to who. It was more of like a [19:34] tracking your network feed. [19:36] and it became more promotional in nature. So in a way, just letting that be, [19:42] just naturally just moved into more of a professional type of feed. [19:46] and [19:47] What we've done is we've shifted dramatically into building... Actually, this was... [19:54] one of the things I was excited about, after I was leading the mobile team, [19:57] There was no feed team. [19:59] There was no unified feed team. There was no feed PM to an extent. I asked to do this role. Nobody cared about it. I really believed in it. I have strong conviction about what I could do there. And I asked to do this role and reassemble the team around it. [20:12] And one of the main things we've done was [20:16] to really set the new purpose for it, which was this is not a – [20:20] a springboard for other products. This is not a traffic jumpstart. It's not an upsell feed. It's really about [20:31] People that matter, talking about things that I care about professionally. [20:34] It's about knowledge exchange. [20:36] It's about how can I get the right views to the right experts in a way that actually helps them build a reputation and build their business. And then we started from there.

[20:46] backwards so it was basically setting that ground for that mountain peak that was nowhere to be imagined at the beginning [20:53] and making our way backwards. [20:55] The first thing we did [20:56] was really making it AI first. [20:59] So the AI team back then was completely centralized. It was not part of any product team. [21:07] And we brought it together with one unified AI first team and we [21:12] The belief I had was ultimately the engine of the car was AI, and that was almost like deprioritized or delegated to a team that was not unified in objectives. So bring that in. [21:24] And then I spend most of my time on objectives and algorithm features and [21:29] data training, which kind of led me into my passion about training product people to be AI first product people. [21:36] And that was a big transformation there, really shifting [21:39] And we had an incredible AI team, but they were completely... Actually, it was a confused operation. They were building something for a whole different purpose. [21:47] and we were trying to aim to that mountain peak, and they were pulling in a different direction. Not [21:52] No bad intent. That's what they were told to do. So bring it together into this SWAT team, [21:59] was the first thing that actually was extremely powerful. But then came the hard work. You have a product that works in a certain way, [22:07] and you almost want to change its DNA altogether. And it was very hard because whenever we're trying to run experiments that were mass and scale,

[22:18] I told you everybody was relying on the feed for their traffic. [22:21] It just scared the whole system because numbers were shifting up and down and teams were freaking out about meeting their goals. [22:28] Thank you. [22:28] And then I realized that was just spending my time in escalations instead of actually building a great product. [22:35] So what I did was I carved out two million members. [22:38] And I said, those are my members. I'm going to focus on building that mountain peak. I'm going to build for them. [22:45] full liberty in doing whatever it doesn't hurt numbers giving the scale [22:49] and really focus on building a great experience for them. [22:52] It wasn't overnight and it wasn't over a week, but over the course of months, we've seen dramatic behavior change. [23:00] for those members almost like secluded like a country of people that were seeing a different [23:04] experience of LinkedIn. [23:06] And once we saw that, you actually had strong evidence that, wow, if I bring this in, [23:12] We don't need to spend time talking about how does this pie get slotted between different teams. We can actually grow the pie. [23:18] The experience just manifests itself in a whole different way. And that was a big change internally. It wasn't overnight, but it was... [23:28] really powerful [23:30] in getting everybody around to see, wow, we have this cohort that is doing extremely well, which was a randomized cohort. [23:37] and then how we can bring it out. [23:39] I've also done some crazy things. I've done some negative tests to prove some stuff out. That's for the sake of learning when you run something that you can show that if it's just a promotional feed and you play that out organically,

[23:50] over time, engage with the tier weights. We ran some really important ad tests as well. [23:56] But we're really shown separate, almost like we carved out the different product and we showed that this could work and then we brought it out. [24:02] to the main experience for everybody else. And then that was kind of, [24:07] that would say the inner workings of like minus one to one. Then the scaling part really became when we started to focus on [24:13] professional opportunities. So when people actually share how do they get the right views, [24:18] into the experience. We don't compete for volume. [24:21] Thank you. [24:21] Like it's not we're not in the same kind of category of meta in terms of the scale there But we will compete all day long for the right people seeing your content and [24:30] In fact, I think in many ways that's the most powerful part of LinkedIn. How do we make sure that it's professionally productive and safe conversations? How do we trade off bad engagement all day long? In fact, [24:42] one of the when we started shifting the ai objective [24:45] from click through into more downstream conversations. [24:50] Spammers actually took notice as well. So they were jumping over the LinkedIn bag wagon. So we had to spend a lot of time. [24:56] removing bad activity from LinkedIn. [24:59] But that's been the evolution of this process. [25:02] That is amazing. There's so much I want to dig into here. Okay, so this 2 million user carve out that you did, basically, [25:08] Everyone was just like, what the hell are you doing to our metrics and goals? You're causing all this trouble for the business. Why is this team causing... [25:13] hurting our metrics. So that was basically a group that, uh, [25:17] Those two million users are the only ones that saw this new updated feed.

[25:21] And. [25:22] Were they removed from everyone else's metrics so they weren't fluctuate as much, or is it just... [25:27] It could be kept in the overall because it wasn't as important. It was a small percentage. Exactly. Okay, got it. But for us, they were like the world. We were basically able to prove with them. Got it. Okay, that's so smart. Okay, so basically you just decided we're only going to move your metrics a little bit, worst case. I tried for this. I felt that I tried for a few months to play on the overall experience with everybody, but it was... [25:48] It was really hard, almost like impossible, because you have an organization that is so tied into how things work. [25:55] that I was just hitting walls after walls after escalations, and it was just unproductive. And this is before your chief product officer where you could have just said, "We will take this bet. We know this might hurt metrics short term." [26:06] Yes. Okay, got it. That makes sense. Okay, the other piece, so just like lessons I'm taking away from trying something like this that's an ambitious bet within a company is, [26:15] Put a PM and a team on it with a goal. That feels like a core part of the success of just like somebody's ass is on the line to doing this thing. [26:23] Always, always. [26:24] with focus on this one problem and then [26:27] There's the way you described there's this goal for this feed, but how did you actually try to turn that into a goal or a metric or a KPI? What was that in the end? Was there something there? Yeah, this is an interesting one. One thing we've done actually, because the feed is the first thing you land on, I can't just count how many folks engage with the feed because then I'm counting bypassers kind of thing and bystanders that are actually coming into the experience. So we actually started to look at the more... [26:50] We go a lot into active, engaged, and high value engagement. So we go downstream. We put the onus on looking at more downstream engagement there, and we build that.

[27:01] as the feed engagement. So really trying to show that we're not just counting some overall, you know, whatever, it's page views or sessions at the top level. That's not really helpful because any shifts can help there. But really setting targets for that. [27:15] Obviously, it's a marketplace. So there's the creation side, there's the consumption side, making sure that's healthy, [27:20] and engaging people. [27:22] There was so much we went into that. But I think the best thing was... [27:27] It's almost like you carve out, I think when you do minus one to one, [27:30] It's really hard unless the CEO says, I don't care about how the company performs for the next two years. We're going to go for it. [27:38] If you want to keep the site growing and the experience growing, carving out and almost like setting very specific, unique metrics, but then could easily be extended out once you show it. [27:48] was in retrospect the right way to do it. [27:51] And then to give people a glimpse into the way your brain works to identify this is a big opportunity. [27:56] So you talk about just like [27:59] I see there's a lever that we're not... [28:01] investing enough in and I see a huge, this big opportunity to grow all of LinkedIn. How did you decide, I need to go and bet on this thing and lead this team and I think feed is a huge opportunity? I start from beliefs a lot. So I start from like, what do I believe this could be? Or where, like, I actually came to LinkedIn this way. In fact, [28:19] My biggest change in my career was when I moved here and I shifted to more like, what do I care about? What am I excited about? What do I have conviction on? I think it's really hard to be a strong person. [28:30] product leader without having strong conviction about something. Um,

[28:34] So I start there. And in fact, coming to LinkedIn as an example, when I came into LeadMobile, [28:41] LinkedIn was a desktop first company. [28:44] The mobile team was kind of an offshoots of entrepreneurs. I came from a startup that I ran... [28:49] And it wasn't a big, like it wasn't, it was like, okay, I'm going to do mobile, I guess fine. Like, it's like noise at this point. Same with feed and same when I moved shifted into ads because I felt really strong about the ability to flip that into a great way for companies to grow. [29:04] So for me, it starts with a conviction of where things could go. Like, where... [29:09] worded like what do i believe in i believe linkedin [29:12] can be an incredible superpower and daily use case for every professional in the role. [29:17] I believe knowledge sharing and knowledge exchange is the most amazing way [29:22] to grow your career and to grow your business. So that needs to be... [29:27] a strong pillar of the experience that didn't exist before. [29:30] And what is better than the field experience, the home phase to actually build it? So I don't get attached to what did not work in the past. That's not, I don't know, maybe it's a mistake sometimes, but I don't. That doesn't stop me from thinking about the future. [29:44] How do you actually make time to think like this? You know, a lot of people are listening to this like, OK, I want to think about what could this become? [29:51] Is this just the way your brain works? You're always thinking, what could this be? Do you set time aside to think quarterly or yearly? [29:58] What could this be if we really [30:01] May this amazing. [30:02] It's a good question. I haven't thought about it as a process I do. I don't set time aside for this, but I'm...

[30:11] i'm very reflective i try to focus [30:14] Love the conversations on [30:16] like the dream, like what ultimately are we trying to achieve? I think LinkedIn has a great process called vision to values that started from [30:26] our former CEO, Jeff Winner, which is, like if you said this is for company or for a product, which is, if you're successful, what change would happen in the world? Which I love. It's just a great phrase. It's just a great empowering phrase. So I actually tend to spend a lot of my time there. [30:40] I'm also very optimistic in nature. Again, sometimes it's probably not best for any role perspective. You want somebody to be more pessimistic about the future. [30:51] I tend to lead with beliefs versus evidence. I try to prove my beliefs with evidence, but I don't lead with evidence. [30:59] Awesome. Okay. And then maybe just one more tactical question about this shift that I wish I could spend hours on because it's so interesting. [31:06] the success you had making the feed so engaging. [31:09] Is there anything tactically that would just like, wow, that really made a big dent in people wanting to come here and post and share interesting content like a feature or... [31:16] It's part of the strategy that really made the feed [31:19] social. I think the lesson would be, for me, that was the biggest learning going into AI Force. That gave me the [31:27] Why is AI so core and why I got to make it a priority all the way to my role today to make sure the rest of the organization thinks AI first? [31:36] The understanding is that in a marketplace, if I'm able to satisfy your need on the other side, then it's magic.

[31:43] So ultimately it came down to AI is the ultimate matchmaker. It's underutilized, it's misunderstood, it's run separate from the team. And in a marketplace, it's all about value exchange. And if I'm able to do value exchange really well, [31:58] then people would come back. [32:00] and they do and they engage and actually they come back even more and they spend more time so for me it was that [32:06] is that [32:08] depth into AI first as the engine that moves the whole organization forward. [32:12] Got it. So essentially making sure the content you are seeing is the most engaging you could see. [32:17] based on using [32:18] AI to make the algorithm really smart. [32:20] On both sides, if you're the creator, if you're the person sharing, remember this was a while back, I think it was the former Olympics. [32:27] And a person shared like, you know, I showed like an article on LinkedIn about, you know, [32:33] how they should not call it Olympics, they should call it like the commercial Olympics, because it's all about commercials and less Olympics. And then they sent me this amazing screenshot about how [32:45] NBC execs were covering the Olympics, were viewing the post. [32:49] This first thing was gold. It was like, "Oh my God, my content is influencing people. People are seeing it. People that matter." So that's what's really key. Making sure that when you share something, you share your expertise, the right people on the other side, [33:04] are relevant to your content and they see it, that could make your day or your week or actually, it could make your living in many ways. [33:13] And then on the receiving side, when I come in, it's the things I'm excited about seeing. It's the things that I can actually...

[33:19] The reason your content resonates so much with other people, I can actually take your podcast and I can apply them at work. [33:26] What could be a better way to learn? I'll give you another example, which was very, very recent. [33:31] I met with a known professor in this field, and he shared with me how over the last year and a half he started using LinkedIn. [33:39] Because somebody told him, you have a great content. Why don't you just post it? I was like, I don't want to post on social media. I'm like, oh, LinkedIn is different. Share on LinkedIn. [33:46] And it was like, I post daily. I have so much content over the years. I post daily. [33:51] And he basically told me this is unbelievable in terms of economic opportunity I'm getting. [33:56] He's like, I'm getting speaking engagements. [33:59] that are roughly half the salary I make in a year here at the university, [34:04] just by people seeing this content and getting to the right people, [34:08] I was invited to advise prime ministers [34:11] on their investment strategy for the country. [34:15] And I've been teaching for 20 years, but [34:19] this platform just completely elevated my ability to reach and influence people. [34:24] That's the magic, and that's the value exchange, and that's the kind of matchmaking at scale. [34:29] Amazing. That's an awesome story.

[34:59] but for everything B2B SaaS. Organizations like Ramp, Drada, and Electric use Merge to access their customers' accounting data to reconcile bill payments, file storage data to create searchable databases in their product, or HRIS data to auto-provision and deprovision access for their customers' employees. And yes, if you need AI-ready data for your SaaS product, then Merge is the fastest way to get it. So, want to solve your organization's integration dilemma once and for [35:29] at merge.dev slash Lenny and receive a $50 Amazon gift card. That's merge.dev slash Lenny. [35:38] I want to shift a little bit and talk about this AI first mindset that you've touched on a lot. So you talked about how at the beginning of this investment, you've already been focused on AI before it was really... [35:48] Before as hot as it is today [35:51] And I've heard from many people that you're really big on [35:53] getting people to shift to this mindset of being very ai first clearly it's worked really well at linkedin [35:59] I'm curious just what that actually looks like. I know you could be like, hey, guys, we've got to be AI first. AI, AI, AI. [36:04] But it's different to actually make people really think differently. How do you actually, like on the ground, help people shift their perspective and think AI first? [36:13] I can spend days on this. It's actually so important for me. It's a key focus for me. Actually, to your point, long before it became cool, [36:22] to talk about AI in the last two years. And in fact, I think I've learned this on myself. So when it comes to the feed, I took the role of the AI product leader, it didn't exist in the company, there was no

[36:32] person that was ever, from a product perspective, thinking about AI? I think it starts with a belief, like we talked about before. I think every technological revolution [36:41] has dramatically changed the way we build. [36:44] and AI arguably is the biggest one in our lifetimes. And when I say AI first, it's not about a tech, it's a mindset. It's a start with strategy. [36:53] like, [36:53] It's rare, maybe now you'll see it, but it was rare two years ago to see anybody in their strategy talk about the role of AI and how they build with AI. Then it goes to the product and then the talent itself you hire. [37:06] Do they actually think this way? The analogy I would give to people is imagine a river rafting boat. [37:13] and you have everybody on the sides holding the pedals, and adding accuracy, adding speed, [37:18] but there's the guide on the back and they're holding those two pedals. [37:22] Those two pedals navigate pretty much to both and those pedals are AI. [37:26] And the guide better be you. [37:28] And in most cases in companies, [37:31] the guide was somebody else it wasn't the product leader [37:35] So then the question is, if I actually is directing your product or success and it's the biggest factor, [37:41] and you as the public eater is not the one holding those two pedals, what are you doing? [37:46] And then I realized that it was a bit of a lack of education in that. Like there was actually most product leaders used to think of AI as this like [37:55] Black box, magic spells, [37:58] that they don't know how it's working, so they're delegating. And obviously that's as far from the truth as possible. But there's so many ways to unpack it. Like when it came to the feed where I pushed, for example, more specifically for the teams, it doesn't stay as an AI first.

[38:14] There is the objective, I would ask him, what is the objective of the algorithm? [38:19] I would challenge you to ask folks more, and the folks who are leading products specifically with algorithms inherited built into them, [38:26] what is the objective of the algorithm and can you actually [38:29] Can you write it down for me on a board? [38:31] they should be able to do so. Ultimately it's a mathematical formula. [38:34] And then it's like, what features have you added to... [38:38] to the algorithm. [38:40] And this is not user features. This is specifically what parameters to learn on. And then what investment do you have in data collections and fine-tuning? [38:49] Now everybody talks a big game about fine-tuning, but again, two years ago, fine-tuning was something that the... [38:54] Product folks fought the engineering team was supposed to do. [38:57] No, it's the whole organization. In fact, you can build a whole strategy just on data collection and fine-tuning. [39:04] and your product will see tremendous success. [39:07] Or you can delegate it and it will never happen. So, [39:11] In many ways, that was bringing into the fold. In our phase one, which really started around 2016 for me, in every team I went to, [39:21] The AI component was... [39:23] The area I spent most of my time on, I hired people for that, product leaders. I spent most of my, back to like, how do I spend my resources? Most of my resources there. And it was my top priority, all the way from strategy to talent. [39:37] And ultimately, with the last couple of years, we've seen this metamorphosis of [39:42] AI and this incredible new wave and we've done

[39:46] a pretty big change there as well over the last two years. [39:49] I love this. So I took some notes on what you're talking about. So kind of, [39:53] The big message that I'm taking away so far is, [39:55] As a product leader, you need to [39:57] think about things that you thought the engineering leader had to think about or the ML engineer was thinking about things like what is the objective of our algorithm [40:06] What are the features that we're building into it? What is the data collection strategy? How are we fine tuning it? As a PM, you should be asking these questions. [40:13] In fact, you should go all the way to infrastructure. You can have massive lifts in your product outcomes and goals if you probably enhance your infrastructure. How many product people talk about the infrastructure they have? [40:24] right not not many uh influences like those are things ultimately your goal is to you know [40:32] Your goal is to win with your products and build a much more experience to your members and customers. [40:37] Literally just changing the infrastructure on top of what you build it could be the biggest lever than you building another button. [40:43] or experience for your for your members on the top of it so like say the pm's at linkedin are you encouraging them all to [40:49] Like, is it like, how is AI integrating into what you're doing? [40:52] How do you just set this up so that teams do this well within LinkedIn? Yeah, so coming into this role in early 2020, we basically established an AI academy. Every PM had to go through training, just like we did mobile in 2020. [41:06] 14, we can move the whole organization to be mobile first. So everybody had to go through this process. [41:12] I spend a lot of time in my reviews on the AI strategy [41:15] the objectives. We make sure there's actually AI practitioners on the product side who are strong, who can teach.

[41:22] So we kind of like, you know, in waves started to build more of like expertise and kind of distinguished leaders across that can actually bring this learning across the board. And then. [41:31] In fall 2022, when we all know what happened, at least a few months after, but we started early, [41:37] we completely change our entire product operations and portfolio. [41:44] so we can focus on this new wave of AI with LLMs in the front. So LinkedIn has been working with AI very closely since the early days. [41:54] but mostly as a matchmaker. So it was the matchmaker for our marketplaces. Somebody looks to hire this dream candidate, and then you have a candidate looking for a dream job, and AI would be the one doing the matchmaking. We talked about... [42:06] the knowledge sharing on the feed, [42:08] It happens in our commerce platform as well. But the ISO, I was kind of in the background, so you never saw it. It was kind of making those matches. [42:17] And then with the new wave of AI, we actually brought AI from the [42:24] back of our marketplace as really as the matchmaker to the front. [42:27] and one of the things we've done there was really asking the teams to completely revisit their entire roadmap. This is... [42:35] This is fall of 2022. The world will learn about JotGPT in March 2023. [42:42] So we kind of had like a nice beginning there in terms of getting started. [42:47] And the goal there was let go of what you've built [42:50] let go of your roadmap

[42:52] Go back to the drawing board with what are you trying to solve for, back to that idea of clarity on your problem statement. [42:59] And now tell me what's the solution. That's very much AI first. [43:03] It reminds me of one of the folks I pinged about you, Shira Gesarch. [43:07] She used this quote about you: "Maybe you were made for such a time as this. [43:11] Thank you. [43:12] And it connects to a lot what you're talking about, where you've been thinking a lot about. And back then it was called machine learning, right? Like it wasn't called AI for a long time. And now it's AI. [43:20] The fact that you've been on this so long is just like a perfect synergy for now it's [43:24] working its way into everything. [43:26] Here's an example that I think sometimes to bring it [43:30] to people in a more visceral way if you've been building products. Product leaders are used to very much dictate the experience they're building. [43:38] I want this experience to be exactly like this. I want the member to come from here, and this is the options they have, and I want them to be able to select this, and this will be my default, and [43:49] I want the onboarding to progress this way. [43:52] And I think this is one of the biggest shifts with this when you become an AI first kind of leader. [43:57] is that there is a realization that you don't control the experience anymore. [44:02] you control the ingredients. It's almost like being a chef at a restaurant, and you're used to deciding every part of the dish, right? You're like deciding everything from the ambience to the temperature of the broccoli. And then, you know, this new technology comes in and says, just give me the ingredients. [44:18] Give me the guidelines of how you cook.

[44:22] And I'll take care of it. I'll take care of it. [44:25] Thank you. [44:26] For many folks, this is a very... [44:30] scary feeling they're not used to kind of letting go [44:33] of the control. Obviously, you build safety guards and responsible AI around it, and that's super critical. [44:38] But the essence of it, AI is not deterministic. [44:41] So giving it the rope to learn and do that experience for you, ultimately, will become much, much better. You have to have that belief going into it. [44:50] So along those lines, I'm curious if there's anything you do to avoid [44:54] You know, everyone's like, cool, AI into everything. And then all these stupid things ship that no one wants. [44:58] I saw this hilarious meme of like, oh, wait, we built like a kind of dumb... [45:02] uh artificial person let's integrate it into everything now it's everywhere [45:06] Is there anything you've learned about just [45:08] how not to ship stuff that isn't great. I can tell you what we've done here. We've failed a lot, but we learned so much along the way. When we started it in fall 2022, literally it started with me calling the leaders coming to the room, and we talked about, "Okay, let go of your roadmaps." [45:26] like what we've done great but i want to let go of the roadmaps and i want to instead go back to what are you trying to solve for and let's meet in a couple of weeks and tell me what you're doing [45:35] how you're thinking differently, [45:37] about what you're trying to solve for knowing we have this technology [45:40] in a role for us. So that was like a starting point around just setting out some ground and principles around it. But we didn't start with like new objectives to solve. [45:50] So it wasn't like, oh, we have this cool technology, what can we do with it? It was like, go back to the objectives you were trying to solve, and now with this technology, how can you do that objective better?

[46:00] The second part is we actually allow teams to run. [46:04] to really inspire creativity. I didn't want to contain them. [46:10] Even some things were building duplicates for a while of similar ideas, but then differently. [46:16] Part of it was I was learning. I was very excited to see what people would come up with and see how they can do it. And there was no playbook for building this really, really well. And in many ways... [46:26] we were writing the playbook. Like, prompt engineering became a playbook internally for us, which, [46:30] Every day was amazing. How do you cognitively reverse engineer the brain a little bit? That was incredible. In fact, a lot of things we've learned so much ahead of the market and even shared [46:42] with OpenAI and shared with Microsoft. But then after that period of like just [46:47] Everybody getting excited and building. [46:50] we basically brought it down and we did like top-down garden. So we basically picked the... [46:55] Back to the objectives we had. [46:57] out of everything that you're seeing, [46:59] Those for us look like the best kind of four biggest bets we want to aim for. And we want to converge resourcing across it. So no more... [47:07] Everybody's building whatever they want. [47:10] We also, you know, capacity is also a constraint. Cost is a constraint. We want to start bringing them together. So we really much allowed people to [47:19] I would say many words diverge. [47:22] But then I would say like several weeks after Converge, but we had a lot more excitement and understanding about how this thing works and what we can actually do with it. [47:30] I love that advice. Basically give people a bunch of time and space to explore, experiment, R&D.

[47:35] And then as a top-down [47:37] uh, [47:38] strategy pickings. Then we did top down. Usually I do product jams for every [47:44] multiple topics we have throughout the quarter. [47:47] I just did every week, I just reviewed the five kind of bets we had. [47:52] on a reputed basis, nothing else. Because it was so important for them to understand that this is what I care about and [47:58] And we have to be focused about it. It feels like that space to explore and go crazy is important because otherwise people at the company are going to be like, I wish there's so many this thing I want to try with AI. We should try it. [48:08] and that'll just be pissed because they don't have time to work on it. It's a great point. It wasn't my intention, but I love that you're saying it. It's a great point because I think it gives them that... I was actually... [48:17] for me sometimes almost in uh maybe too much but i try to focus on learnings i was trying i knew just going like this [48:26] We weren't going to learn a lot. [48:27] But having people come back and trying different things and starting going crazy and going... [48:33] pushing the boundaries, we would learn so much. So for me, it was learning, but I love the motivation around also allowing them to have the energy. It relates to another point that a recent podcast episode had with Brian Chesky, where he [48:44] introduces chaos sometimes when things are feeling too comfortable when roadmaps everything's calm everything's on schedule he's just like [48:51] How do we do this in one day versus in two weeks? Let's just see what happens. [48:56] Yeah, because I think people get, like, there is just inertia, right? People get into their, it's human behavior. People get into their lanes. [49:03] they start to feel really comfortable with your lanes and then they don't know that there's a different way to do things.

[49:09] And you have to almost externally invoke that or trigger that. [49:12] So if we think about just your career arc, I'm zooming out a little bit. [49:16] You helped create the mobile experience on LinkedIn. You built the feed initially. Now you're in front of AI. [49:23] I could see why you're so successful at LinkedIn. I was talking to folks about your career arc at LinkedIn, and you basically went from senior PM to senior PM number two to group PM. [49:32] to director to senior director to VP to CPO in like not that many years. [49:37] It's a pretty meteoric rise. [49:39] I wanted to spend a little time here, [49:41] And I want to maybe start with a question of just like, [49:44] If you could give one specific piece of advice for someone [49:48] looking to advance in their career based on what you found to be really effective, what would that be? [49:53] I realize everybody's in their every stage in the career and they have different [49:57] ways to think about the world and what they need. Maybe I'll just share about my journey, what worked for me, instead of giving kind of more of a general advice. First of all, I feel super fortunate. Like I'm building. That's what I love doing. I love building. [50:13] I love working with builders. Sometimes I'm like, "I get paid for this. This is insane." [50:18] But I love... [50:20] I love my craft and I love getting deep into it. So in many ways, I think like [50:25] The things I'm excited about is the things I'm doing. [50:29] When people are starting off, I usually really focus on learning from great people. [50:34] people you talk to or have like amazing mentors and managers, [50:38] Some of them don't even know they were mentors. It's not like a mentor officially. I try to pick up

[50:43] things from people all the time. [50:45] And that's been just a remarkable experience, working with great people. And in many ways, a lot of those great people actually allowed me or empowered me to take on some bigger challenges. [50:57] I could... [50:58] You know, I can see forks in the road where... [51:01] If it wasn't for that person saying something very specific, [51:04] probably would have done something differently. And it just made me think a lot. So I really tried to absorb... [51:09] learning from great people. But by far for me personally, again, this is very personal versus generic advice, it was [51:17] When I moved here, I was an engineer for many years before, I moved here for [51:21] Graduate School in 2008. [51:23] And I always loved building. That was all there. I was there from a young age, but [51:28] When I moved here, I realized my career path [51:31] was very much dictated by one thing it was like what's most in demand what's most challenging [51:38] And how do I do that? It was very childish in many ways. It was not dictated by me. It was in a way, dictated by society. So what's the toughest engineering role? [51:48] What's the best company to go into? [51:50] What's the best army unit to serve in? And I felt a lot along the way, but always kept going. And then when I came here, [51:59] uh there was a really big challenging for me personally around like what do i care about [52:04] What matters most to me? And that was... [52:06] Again, it's very personal in many ways. It was very much for me an impact on learning, [52:12] And actually, how do I create impact more broadly?

[52:16] I shifted [52:17] 180 and how my thought process used to go. It was less about [52:22] What was out there and exciting and in demand and challenging [52:25] And it was more about, like, where did I have strong conviction on? [52:28] Thank you. [52:29] What was I passionate about? And where did I feel I could make a dent and learn? [52:35] and that was my path forward so after school with a student visa and massive school debt [52:42] I started to start a company, which was... [52:45] not a very intelligent kind of decision based on my economic circumstances. [52:52] but i didn't care i was like this is my new path and then i got into linkedin and apply for a job i met with who was who was in my role today dip nishar that time [53:02] And we talked and I said, this is how I think we should, you know, this is how LinkedIn mobile should be built. [53:08] And he was like, okay, how about you come and build it? I was like, amazing. So I didn't apply to LinkedIn. And then at LinkedIn, I was always kind of like, this is what I want to do. This is what's exciting for me. [53:18] And this is the dent I think I can make. And this is my plan for it. So I don't know if this is a recommendation for everybody, but for me, it's worked really, really well. It was... [53:28] really pursuing the conviction i had [53:30] uh and my excitement and kind of bring that to the fold with people i do think that in products in in building product if you're not generally excited about what you want to build you don't have conviction about it [53:41] It's going to be very hard for you to make a big impact. [53:44] That's also a similar theme from my most recent podcast with Vlad.

[53:50] If you don't actually buy into the mission of the... [53:52] place you're working on, you're not going to have a good time. [53:54] Yeah, there's a... For public people, it's a very fortunate... [53:58] position. I always tell people, if you're in one of the most fortunate positions you can have, because [54:04] If you just measure a thing for you, just measure based on your career and so on, [54:10] People are going to evaluate you based on your actual work. It's a very special place. It's not, nobody cares about your title. Who cares? [54:17] Maybe the company name for some people matters, but for the most part, it's about the impact you created [54:24] with the products you've built. If I think about somebody's resume, [54:28] I think if it was a product resident, it would be [54:30] It would be the products you built and the impact you had with it. I don't care about the companies you worked at. I don't care about the logos. I don't care about the titles. Slightly like, again, not to kind of overextend, but... [54:42] Somebody's almost like an artist, right? It's like a musician. It's the albums you took out. [54:46] and how well they did. [54:48] And I think for product people, it's a very fortunate place to be that you get measured based on the impact you have. [54:54] That sounds like a LinkedIn feature idea right there. [54:57] I feel like if there's any company that can make that happen, it'd be you guys. [55:02] So some of the takeaways here essentially is, [55:05] try to index towards what are you actually excited about and motivated to work on and [55:10] driven by versus where it's the most amazing company to work at or the most challenging problem. [55:16] Yeah, I think sometimes great companies [55:19] have great opportunities for you to have dent at scale, but you need, you need to be the one doing it. Like it's,

[55:25] If you are thinking about [55:27] I don't know, a title or that did not, you know, for like once I did the change into my excitement around impact, [55:35] That's been at least my yardstick. When I look at people that I talk to or interview internally... [55:41] I, the first thing to remind me is like, what did you build? [55:46] And what did you learn and how well did it do? [55:48] That's what I care about. [55:51] I imagine there's also people on the other side where all they do is work on things that are really exciting to them. [55:55] And they could use a little pushing towards the other direction of what's actually important in the world. 100%. If you tell me, again, everybody has their different... If you tell me, like, hey, you can work on something... [56:05] super exciting but it's on the kind of the fringes of the company [56:09] Or you can work on something which is a bit more grindy, but it's on the core of the company. [56:14] The latter would like no doubt. Like for me, impact first. [56:18] Yeah. So and just listening to the story you've told of the things you decided to focus on as a clear example that like you saw. [56:25] hey, there's this huge opportunity in the feed, I'm going to go tackle that, or mobile. [56:28] All right. [56:29] So I think there's a lot of, it's kind of this Venn diagram is what I'm taking away. [56:32] of just what's important, what am I excited about. [56:35] Yeah, at least for me. Awesome. Okay, so I know you've got to run relatively soon, so we're going to get to our very exciting lightning round. But before we do that, is there anything else that... [56:46] you think would be interesting or useful for folks to know or leave them with. I know we covered a bunch of things already. [56:52] Yeah, you know, one thing that actually, [56:55] I've now built it into a podcast. But something I'm really excited about is I don't think there's one way of building. Remember when the Steve Jobs biography came out?

[57:06] everybody read it oh that's the way to build and like that was unique to him [57:11] and one of the things I love a lot is when I look at like great builders they're all very distinct they're all different and I used to do this thing internally I used to [57:21] invite kind of product builders of different disciplines and [57:25] and have a fireside chat with them. And I saw people across the company join, not just PMs or designers, but folks across. And I built that into a podcast. I love your podcast. Mine is very different. It's more around like, [57:38] what is their edge a little bit like what what would uh is this is from the co-founder of pixar [57:44] Ed Catmull to the CPU of Canva or Spotify, Roblox, but all the way to a chef, Dan Barber, who's like, [57:52] the number one chef in the US for many years. [57:56] And it's just everybody has their craft and they do it differently. [57:59] It's called Building One. I'm excited about it. It's a little bit of a plug right now, Lenny. Please, yeah. Where do people find it? Let's blow it up. What's called Building One? Building One on Apple or Spotify. It's short and it's really about showing you different disciplines from a chef [58:14] to an animation director. And really the main learning there is like everybody builds differently and you can be very successful. [58:22] But it's very authentic to how they are personally, and it's how they push their craft to the limit. It's how well they've done their craft. [58:29] I love that. And something I super believe is just the power of focusing on your strengths and the things that make you a little different versus trying to become good at everything. 100%. That's so cool. Okay, build one. We'll link to it in the show notes. Building one. Building one. Building one. Okay, amazing. And it's on all the podcasting platforms. Okay, great.

[58:47] With that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? Yes. All right. First question is, what are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people? [58:57] So I have this code continuously. Actually, it's this string. [59:00] I love that you have them right there. I have nothing to tell you about them. They look very pretty back there. Don't mess up. I'm not going to destroy my study. So I love fundamentals. I love studying fundamentals. So if you're somebody who starts in your career... [59:11] My fundamental book is one, mindset. It's about growth mindset. It's about basically the ability to continuously grow. [59:18] Over time, you know, in one sentence is the whole idea is our skills, our abilities are malleable. [59:25] We can completely develop them. We can build expertise and craft and mastery. And it's really a mindset change. And Carol Dweck, who wrote the book, [59:34] was also my wife's manager and that's how we got into that so that's kind of like our second religion at home [59:41] The second book is Thinking Fast and Slow. [59:44] Thank you. [59:45] um by daniel kahneman i'm i love behavior economics when i think about products i think a lot i always start from people like what is the member expectation what are they trying to do and this is like the bible for behavior [1:00:00] So if you're building front end products or even like you're thinking about how you [1:00:05] Rowdy organization [1:00:07] It's an incredible book. Every page is like a stopper. You have to stop and think. [1:00:12] And lastly, on the fundamental side, is high output management. [1:00:16] by Andy Grove. It's like, there's so much basics to doing good managerial. It's like,

[1:00:22] I think after you read this book, your managerial skills should start from a B. [1:00:27] And then you can, you know, over time become an A. [1:00:29] But beginning to a B is just a level of putting the effort in. [1:00:34] and knowing the best practices. So I think those are all fundamentally [1:00:38] great books that I really like to give to people. That's awesome. I love that they're right there behind you. [1:00:43] Is there a favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed? [1:00:46] Yesterday I saw Bluey. You know Bluey? I've heard of Bluey. My kid's not old enough for it yet. Oh, you're in for a treat. Okay. So I love Bluey. So Bluey is this animation series from Australia. And... [1:01:00] It's this... [1:01:01] What's beautiful about it is I can watch it with my... [1:01:05] 6 year old, 9 year old and 12 year old. [1:01:08] And we're all going to enjoy it. [1:01:11] we're all gonna laugh at the same point but at the nuance of the jokes it's like when i think about a product [1:01:17] The way Puri Blue is built, it's built for the whole family. [1:01:21] But it's built as layers. There's like layers of dialogue and points that they're trying to get across. And it's all packaged together into one experience. So for me, it's amazing that I could sit next to my 60-year-old daughter. We would both laugh at this sweet animation kind of thing. It's like a family of dogs. And she would laugh at the nuance of the point. I would look at the different nuance. For me, it's like that's a genius creation. [1:01:48] of how you build a product. Speaking of Ed Catmull, the Pixar does that really well as well.

[1:01:53] Totally. And I feel like the story of Bluey is really incredible, too. It's just like a random little independent group and they just are making tons of money with it. It's just amazing. The dialogue there is like one. It's slightly edgy, but not too edgy. It's exactly right. It's just exactly right. [1:02:09] Okay, makes me want to watch it. [1:02:11] Okay. [1:02:12] Do you have a favorite product that you've recently discovered that you really love, whether it's physical or digital? [1:02:17] So I like playing guitar. It's amateur. I'm not that good, but I love playing it. And there is a combination of done recently I really like. There's a spark amp I have, which allows me to... [1:02:29] kind of play with effects easily, but that's not what I use it for. I can [1:02:33] I can tune my guitar based on a specific song I like. [1:02:38] Thank you. [1:02:38] So if I want to do Pink Floyd or Metallica or Nirvana, [1:02:43] or David Bowie, I can get that tune easily. I don't have to be an expert. I can just download the tune to my guitar, which is so great. [1:02:49] And then I coupled that with the, it's called the Ultimate Guitar App. [1:02:53] and basically it doesn't give you the chords and the tabs it gives me the other instruments [1:02:59] so I can get the drums going. [1:03:02] I can get the, you know, it's a violin going, whatever that is that's going in the band. [1:03:08] As somebody who does not play so well and plays for itself and nobody's supposed to listen to hand playing because it's really just a way for me to enjoy my time. [1:03:16] It's just an amazing... I would never get into any band, so this is the closest I can get to get to a band. So I love that combination. [1:03:22] I wish we could close this podcast episode with you playing your guitar, but I don't know if that will help the ratings of the show. No, man, that's amazing. OK, two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often repeat yourself, find really useful and work your life, share with folks?

[1:03:38] For growth mindset, there's a motto that I really like. It's called Becoming is Better Than Being. [1:03:43] it's like the moment you think you kind of achieved something is the moment you start to deteriorate down. It's like you're like, you're like, [1:03:50] We're really trying to grow as human beings. We're trying to learn. We're trying to evolve. [1:03:55] Product is a good example. I think the moment you think you actually mastered it is the moment that you become obsolete. [1:04:00] So I love the idea that becoming is a better goal than continuously trying to reach some kind of level. [1:04:06] What about it? [1:04:07] Final question, just to come back to LinkedIn, is there like a [1:04:10] Fun feature of LinkedIn people don't know about should check out. Is there anything new that's like, oh, that's that's something you should try or that's something that might surprise you about LinkedIn these days? [1:04:19] Maybe I'll give a couple so I don't have to pick the best right off the bat. One, right now we're heavily invested in video, and it's doing so well for those creators. We talked about it. Like immersive video where you can actually come in. We talked about for us – [1:04:33] you know, we're like video is, you know, obviously a best practice right now in the industry, but on LinkedIn, the right views really matter. So highly encourage creators to kind of think about their video play at LinkedIn. And then I think our [1:04:47] what we call our coach experience in some cases is so powerful. Like we for job seekers out there, you know, we have people hired on LinkedIn. [1:04:56] There's like seven folks hired every minute. Job seeking is a lonely... [1:05:01] journey [1:05:01] I was actually in a session recently meeting with job seekers and I was talking to them and one...

[1:05:10] started crying midway to the session. [1:05:13] because they said i cannot share my journey with anybody because i feel like i'm alone in this [1:05:18] people don't get how hard it is i feel very accomplished but i can't get the job [1:05:22] Thank you. [1:05:23] And I wish there was a buddy. [1:05:26] I wish there was something that I could talk to, brainstorm with, who wouldn't judge me. He would just be trying to help me without paying hundreds of dollars to a coach of some sort. I don't have that money. And in many ways, when we walked him through the job seeking experience, the coach experience, we built this coach aspect where... [1:05:45] You can go to any job and you can riff on the job with this kind of really kind of this new AI, this LLM that is standard to you, personalized to you, private to you. Everything from your fit. [1:05:57] to how to best apply, [1:05:59] to kind of consulting about different opportunities to comparing this to others [1:06:04] to feeling supported. So when we talk to people around, we always... [1:06:08] I love to measure the impact of our work by emotion. When we talked to job seekers after that, it was basically the sense of I felt supported. [1:06:16] In many ways, getting to that ability to remove the loneliness... [1:06:20] is amazing. It's a little bit like people need to... [1:06:25] We're making it more and more visible and more and more kind of ramped to everybody to a certain point. [1:06:32] That's a really powerful way to just humanize the jobseeking experience for everybody. Awesome. And to find that, is it called LinkedIn Coach? It's in the job. If you go to the jobs tab on LinkedIn, actually a few weeks ago, we just put it on the top. You don't have to go to the specific job and find it. You can just start there and engage with it. Awesome. Just to give a quick plug to a future podcast that's coming out, there's this book called "Never Search Alone."

[1:06:55] that we're going to have the author on the podcast soon. And it's all about the same idea of having a buddy that helps you search for a job. Yeah. When I think about the future of AI in the sense of belief, that relationship is going to be sacred. The relationship between [1:07:08] AI and the human is going to be afraid. Do you know what nomophobia means? [1:07:13] - Nomophobia, no. - Not nomophobia. - Nomophobia, no, being afraid of something. - It's the fear, it's the anxiety of being away from your phone. [1:07:21] I have that. I think we all. I think we're in for AI no phobia at one point. We're... [1:07:29] You're going to get to a point where your eye is going to feel so intimate, so personal. [1:07:32] that it would actually feel concerning to you to be away from it. [1:07:37] Oh, man. There's a reminds me of friend.com, which just launched in a really fun. I don't know if you saw friend.com and their launch video. [1:07:44] No, I did not. Oh man, check out friend.com. It's like a digital friend that just is with you all the time and you're talking to him and it's an AI. [1:07:50] Oh, we're just getting started there. We're in for incredible revolution there. I'm excited and scared at the same time. Tomer, thank you so much for being here. This was amazing. You're awesome. Two final questions. Where can folks check out stuff that you're working on? I know you have a course also, you have a podcast, so just give people a sense of where to find that. Awesome. So obviously I'm on LinkedIn. Reach out anytime. I read everything people send to me. I don't always reply to everything, but I read everything sent to me. And then if you want to go deep on AI first, I have two courses. They're free. [1:08:18] I think it's a phenomenal way for you to build or starting to build your expertise, especially if you're in product. It's a great way.

[1:08:25] to go deeper and not to stay kind of on the high level parts of things. [1:08:29] Amazing. We'll link to all those things in the show notes. Tomer, thank you so much for being here. [1:08:33] Lani, thank you. It's our pleasure. [1:08:35] Bye, everyone. [1:08:57] See you in the next episode.