Career frameworks, A/B testing, onboarding tips, selling to engineers | Laura Schaffer (Amplitude)

[00:00] And like the, you know, dead of the night, by that I mean like, you know, 7pm or something. [00:04] on, I think it was a pretty sure it was a Friday. [00:06] We just... [00:08] asked for forgiveness and kind of put these questions into the sign up flow and ran his navy test. [00:14] with a small group. [00:15] And, you know, I'm fully expecting, okay, this is going to like hurt our numbers, but maybe it won't be so bad, you know, and. [00:21] I'm prepared to advocate the power of this data that we're getting. And I was totally, I'm thinking of like written, started, write like the, like the framework for how I wanted to, to, to. [00:30] surfaces. [00:31] And we start to get the data for this thing. [00:33] I'm not getting an improved conversion. [00:35] Like there's no personalization, nothing past it, just the questions. It improved conversion by like 5%. [00:42] Like just improve signups. [00:44] And it was one of those like, what? Like, okay, this, like, [00:47] What is going on here? Welcome to Lenny's podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences. [00:57] building and growing today's most successful products. [01:00] Today, my guest is Laura Schaefer. [01:02] The week we recorded this chat turned out to be Laura's first week in a new gig [01:07] as head of growth for Amplitude, taking over for a previous legendary guest, Elena Verna. Prior to Amplitude, Laura was VP of Product and Growth at a company called Rapid. Before that, she spent over seven years at Twilio as head of growth and PM lead of the growth platform and experimentation platform at Twilio. In our conversation, we dig into Laura's career growth framework and the importance of carving your own path versus waiting for one to be carved for you. We also get into a bunch of tactical and surprising advice around running experiments,

[01:37] making decisions on gut versus data, developing your growth strategy, and how to sell your product to developers. Laura has a wealth of wisdom, and I learned a lot from our conversation. With that, I bring you Laura Schaefer after a short word from our wonderful sponsors. [01:54] This episode is brought to you by public.com who want to tell you about their new treasury accounts, which earn a 4.8% yield on your cash. That is higher than a high-yield savings account while still being backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. Treasury yields are at a 15-year high, but buying U.S. treasuries is super complicated. You have to go to a bank or navigate an ancient government website. Or at least that was the case. [02:24] of a bank account. You can access your cash whenever you want, even before your treasury bills hit maturity. There are no hold periods, no settlement days, just a safe place to park your cash and earn a reliable yield. Public will automatically reinvest your treasury bills at maturity, so you don't have to do anything to continue growing your yield. And you can manage your treasuries alongside stocks, ETFs, crypto, and any alternative assets. Do all your investing [02:54] a high-yield savings account only with a treasury account at public.com/lenny. [03:01] This episode is brought to you by Eppo. Eppo is a next-generation A-B testing platform built by Airbnb alums for modern growth teams. Companies like Netlify, Contentful, and Cameo rely on Eppo to power their experiments. Wherever you work, running experiments is increasingly essential, but there are no commercial tools that integrate with a modern growth team stack. This leads to wasted time building internal tools or trying to run your experiments through a clunky marketing tool.

[03:30] be, one of the things that I loved about our experimentation platform was being able to easily slice results by device, by country, and by user stage. Epo does all that and more, delivering results quickly, avoiding annoying prolonged analytics cycles, and helping you easily get to the root cause of any issue you discover. Epo lets you go beyond basic click-through metrics, and instead use your North Star metrics, like activation, retention, subscriptions, and payments. [04:00] backend, email marketing, and even machine learning clients. Check out Eppo at getepo.com, get E-P-P-O dot com, and 10x your experiment velocity. [04:15] Laura, welcome to the podcast. Awesome. Thanks, Lenny. It is so great to be here. Thanks for having me. [04:21] It's great to have you. So I asked Elena, Elena, Elena, I'm not even sure how to pronounce her name. Maybe you know, what is it? Elena. Okay. Okay. I think I've said it wrong all the time, all this time. Okay. Elena. [04:31] So I asked Elena Furnit, who's a popular guest on this podcast, [04:34] who I should have on this podcast, and you are the first person that immediately came to mind. [04:39] And so I'm really excited that we're doing this and that you agreed to be on. [04:42] Well, she's the best and I'm really happy that she referred me because I'm just stoked to be here. [04:47] So thanks for listening to her guidance. [04:49] Absolutely. And it's kind of a cool time to be chatting. You're kind of the newly minted head of growth at Amplitude. [04:55] And so congrats, first of all. [04:57] Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, this is my day two and a half.

[05:01] Here. [05:03] Wow. You're a veteran. Yeah, right. [05:06] I love it. Some companies, there's like a little percentage that shows you how many people have joined before you. And I wonder what that percentage already is. We had that at Twilio and I got pretty, pretty high up there after a while. We had like a stack rank and a spreadsheet. And yeah, but it is funny. So wherever that thing exists in amplitude, I am like right fresh there at the very bottom. What was the number you got to Twilio? Any do you remember? [05:36] Right. Right. [05:37] Yeah, it's very sweet. [05:39] It will. Yeah. Right. It's like on one hand, it's like, oh, very cool. And like one of the OGs on the other hand, it's like, oh, my gosh, like this person's kind of like that. Bummer. It's a shift, but I'm excited about it for sure. [05:50] So you have this new exciting role, and I thought it'd be fun to start to chat about career growth and just how you think about career growth. [05:59] I know you have a framework of how you think about your own career growth. Clearly, it's worked out. [06:03] So I'm curious to hear about it and see how it could be helpful to folks that are listening. So yeah, can you just tell us about how you think about career growth? [06:11] Career growth is often right. Like it's definitely not a straight lineup, but there's definitely some. [06:17] kind of frameworks and methods that have worked really well for me and I think to [06:20] dive into it, it's first good to talk about [06:23] The one that I most typically see people use to try to grow their career and why that can be a little problematic. [06:29] which is that I see most people are, you know, try to work really hard at kind of the job that they have right within the role that they have at a company.

[06:37] do whatever you can to grow there, show your manager all these things. I seem to keep spreadsheets and sort of wins. So again, come up with performance reviews. [06:45] You know, maybe try to get better advocating for yourself. Maybe try to get peers to notice or your manager's peers. [06:50] And that's all good, like it's all good stuff. But the problem with it is that you're limited [06:55] to what your manager's ability is to advocate for you to promote you [06:59] And you're also limited by the explicit trajectory of your role at that company and where you're [07:04] there's room for that or not at the company. And then often that perception, [07:08] can sometimes be a little bit in contrast to what your perception is, right? [07:12] And also other things that happen, like your manager leaves and then you kind of have to restart with someone else. Right. So. [07:18] The method that I use kind of tries to take that power back a little bit and [07:22] Something that I learned really early on in my career, I was very lucky to learn by accident, [07:27] was at a company called Bandwidth, which is like my first kind of [07:31] quote unquote real job. And, you know, bandwidth is now a public company and they've done all kinds of crazy, amazing things. But I don't know when it was just 50 people. [07:40] And I actually joined in sales. [07:43] And I was, you know, just hungry to kind of make it succeed and grow and, you know, [07:48] you know, bright eyes, everything, you know, first kind of real job. [07:51] But I realized after a few months of being... [07:54] in sales that i was often like repeating the same thing over again like using the same thing to sell over and over again [07:59] and [08:01] It's like, gosh, like this isn't ideal for the customer because I'm going to call me and ask me these questions and wait and get these answers and all this stuff. [08:07] And it's not ideal for the company because they're paying commission on this every time. That's not going to be efficient for our growth.

[08:13] And because we were small, [08:16] i was able to catch our gm and i was just like hey um [08:21] you know, I've noticed this pattern where like I'm repeating things kind of over and over again and [08:27] They're asking the same thing. I think we should put that online. I think we should make that available so they can just see it and then buy it because we had an online... [08:34] checkout process and i was kind of expecting him to be like oh well i know it's important but you know for this or another like we need to like [08:41] You know, we do it this way. And obviously, we've thought all about it. Kind of thinking like, oh, I'm going to come in like this new person. He's going to help me understand what I'm like missing here. There's like a little bit of that. [08:50] that I was expecting. And he goes, [08:52] Wait, wait, like tell me more about that. What do you mean? [08:54] And by the end of the conversation, [08:56] He was like, hey, why don't you go do that? [09:00] Why don't you go build that? [09:01] like experience why don't you put that stuff and like in [09:04] on a self-serve flow and we called it e-commerce manager and it was like [09:08] kind of growth before this, but this is like 2010. [09:10] And that moved me into a totally new position. And the main learning that I had from that was, which really kind of, [09:18] took life at Twilio and it absolutely worked for me there. I'm happy to talk about that too. But the core of that learning was [09:26] Your executive team and executive teams at companies are often very sharp. [09:30] But the nature of their day to day just does not link them with customers. [09:34] right but that means that over time especially as a company grows [09:37] They often lose access to some of the best insights. [09:41] And, you know, the heartbeat of the people who they're providing value to in contrast to folks that are closer to the problem.

[09:47] And so that means that [09:49] your superpower is in [09:51] really pulling those insights in and bringing them to life, staying close to the customer. There's not a single leader or executive [09:57] that isn't going to be stoked to hear about valuable customer insights that highlight problems they might not be seeing. And there's a lot of those. [10:05] So especially, you know, when they align to North Star metrics, those ones are sort of the... [10:10] Powerful ones. [10:11] That was the way that I grew my career at Phil and I'm happy to share kind of that journey too. [10:18] Yeah, it'd actually be cool to hear maybe another example of that. [10:20] But I think an interesting... [10:22] thing that comes up for me here is [10:24] Sometimes you may have an awesome idea, and it may not immediately happen. It may not be like, yes, or let's move on this right immediately. [10:31] And I think it's important to just recognize they're not going to-- [10:34] Follow all your ideas. [10:36] But they're always looking for better ideas. [10:39] To your point, they may not have the information that will lead to an idea. [10:43] that you will have because you're like on the ground dealing with real problems day to day. [10:47] So I think it's important to recognize you're not going to always get your way, and that's normal. [10:51] Yeah, totally. And right. And it's, it's kind of about like, [10:54] almost like building up your [10:56] your individual like brand a little bit. And I think one of the most powerful and accessible ways to do that is learning about your customers. There's always those people [11:04] at companies it's like oh well [11:06] you know, [11:07] I mean, she just knows our customers or he just knows our customers. They just know our customers like they just know. And it's like, well, how do they just know? Like, let's ask that person. Let's get their feedback. And those people

[11:17] often have a good amount of kind of, [11:21] you know, brand recognition of how it's in the company. And they're often thought of when the company needs to do something new or different, or, you know, if someone is, [11:28] you know, hiring, maybe they're thinking about that person for like a cross team thing. So it's one of the ways that you can kind of build [11:34] build that, that brand. And again, it's, [11:37] It's, [11:37] I think it's a sweet spot because it's something that is very valuable to everyone all the way up to the most senior leaders, which we can talk about here in a minute. [11:48] And so it's going to be valuable for you and a valuable tool kind of no matter where you're at. [11:53] in your career and yeah and that's not always an immediate payoff but [11:56] it often does give you a trajectory. [11:59] outside of just your role and just your manager gives you something a little bit broader. [12:05] So maybe a simple way of describing to kind of mirror back what you're saying is kind of carve your own path. Don't necessarily assume your managers will give you. [12:13] the path that makes most sense for you. [12:15] or even give you the biggest opportunity, just like, [12:17] propose, hey, I think this might be a better... [12:20] opportunity and I'd love to pursue it. [12:22] I'd love to hear the Twilio example if that's generally-- Yeah. So I actually joined-- when I joined Twilio, there was no growth team at all, not even a breath of it. [12:31] Join in product marketing. [12:32] and I was leading our product marketing for messaging lines. [12:35] And, you know, but I follow the same guy that I just mentioned. I made it, you know, my own kind of personal policy to like, hey, I'm going to do my job. And I'm like, do well, keep notes of things. I'm doing well and all kind of stuff is good. [12:46] But I'm also going to get to know our customers. And I'm going to get to know our customers really well. I'm going to pay attention.

[12:51] when I'm connecting with them, not just about the space I'm in, but broadly, what are some of the pain points and things are articulating that are relevant to the business and what we're trying to get done? [13:00] And one of the things that came up [13:03] was that users were struggling and folks were struggling [13:07] to get started and use Twilio. [13:09] And that contrasted so deeply. [13:12] to [13:13] Some of the things that our executive team was saying and had high conviction in our company, high conviction, which is a tool. It was so easy to use. In fact, it was like, [13:20] top three things about Twilio that we're really trying to get out of their brand. We're so easy. Developers love us. They say we're so easy. And there's always like, there were tweets coming out all the time, like, you know, developers saying like, oh my gosh, like they got started in a couple of minutes. [13:32] So there's all these things that kind of made that compound and made that conviction stick. [13:36] But as I was talking to customers, I was hearing a very different story. And it made sense as we were penetrating new markets, adding more products. We were adding complexity. [13:45] and we were pulling in folks who were a little bit less motivated, [13:48] And those things contributed to people saying this is this is difficult. [13:52] And so, [13:53] At the time, this wasn't a 50-person number. I could just go to the floor and go to someone and be like, "Hey, [13:59] there's this thing I heard about, like, I think we should do something about it. But there was another tactic that I could take. And this is, I just started sharing, uh, [14:06] voice the customer report i started sharing my insights started writing down and just sharing them and it became this kind of digest and eventually people like hey can i can you share with me can you share with me can you share with me can you share with me [14:15] And this was in like a few months of me joining. I was doing this. [14:19] and then that turned into

[14:21] "Hey, you should host a quarterly Voice to the Customer session for all of the product." [14:26] Right. [14:27] And this was a request that was coming from [14:31] some of the senior leaders of the company. And when our Jeff Lawson, who is our CEO at the time, heard about it, he started attending too. [14:38] So now in the session, I started pulling in other people's insights too, right? Because this was, these are, you know, now that a forum for this, I could kind of do that. [14:45] And, you know, have people send that to me and I could compile it and all of these things. [14:51] And so then, you know, this kind of established me as that person who knows about the customer, even after short tenure. [14:58] And then, you know, when [15:00] you know came time to do annual planning that that year and i joined in 2014 at the end so this is 2015. [15:07] I pitch this idea. Hey, [15:09] We think that it's easy. It is not. Here's data that I have, information that I have. [15:14] And I think that we need to start a growth team here and that needs to be a core focus. And I was able to bring in a really critical partner to that and other folks who could support that because I built up some of that trust. So by the time I was making that pitch, I had someone like Andre Crow, who was like the seventh hire at Twilio and got to number three on that spreadsheet or whatever. [15:37] who was really close to their CEO being like, "Yeah, we desperately need this. I'm seeing this." He led a website. He basically created the Twilio brand. And he led all the website stuff. And he's like, "Yeah, we definitely need this." [15:47] not only did I have that kind of little bit of trust right from the executive team, but I also had folks who were just trusted on their own advocating and supporting this that I was doing. And so it was,

[15:57] approved with like almost [16:00] very easily. I mean, I put stuff together for it, but it was, um, [16:04] you know, kind of the meeting before the meeting had already been done by those other things. So, [16:08] It helped me understand. [16:09] create the growth [16:11] engineering growth product team at Twilio. [16:14] I love just how proactive your advice is here. [16:18] There's a lot of people that [16:19] don't do well and then just like i never had the opportunity or i kind of get [16:24] got looked over all this time and I love that there's [16:27] All this just like, here's things you can be doing to get... [16:30] in front of people to provide value to just create opportunity for yourself. [16:34] Any other advice along the lines of just like, here's the kind of things you could do for yourself versus waiting for someone to come and give you advice? [16:40] opportunity. [16:41] Yeah, I mean, I think that's the most easily actual because to do all of our jobs, we need to know customers. Like we need to know about customer insights, product, we need to know. But then also customer facing teams, such as those who want to crack into product. [16:53] your insights are extremely valuable. You're talking to customers every day. You know more [16:57] about their problems and their pain, [16:59] than a lot of other people do. [17:01] And so, you know, that is by far and away to me that the most powerful and accessible one by anyone in any role. [17:09] in any space. [17:10] But, you know, I'll also say that, you know, [17:12] that broader concept of just, hey, there's things that you know and things of value that you know that others can benefit from at your company. [17:19] And again, building your brand as someone that is supportive, smart, creative, able to solve problems. [17:25] you know make sure that you're sharing that right and so you know

[17:29] maybe you're really freaking good at communicating with brevity. I suck at that, by the way. So like more power to anyone that can do that. I'm actively working on it. [17:39] So share that, like go to your general Slack channel or whatever and just be like, hey, [17:44] just wrote up some tips for how to do it, some ways that I am good at this. And [17:48] those kinds of things can really go a long way towards people starting to view you as [17:53] you know, an SME and not just the space that you're in, but in sort of broader areas. And I can [17:58] always present and open doors for you when other people are sort of looking up to you and seeing you as someone who's strong in ways outside of just the role that you're in. And SME is a subject matter expert, is that right? Yes. I'm going to [18:11] Thank you for unpacking my acronyms. That's another thing that I am actively working on. I got you. Be on the lookout. [18:18] Maybe one last question along these lines is, do you have any advice for framing [18:23] the proposal framing opportunity. [18:26] to your manager or higher-ups that you see has worked best. [18:30] Yeah. So, yeah. And one thing I want to say to you is like with this stuff, I don't think that necessarily does go like counter to what your manager is doing. It's more like supporting them. Like, right. Like I've done this kind of stuff and then it's helped my manager promote me. [18:41] right so it's it's not necessarily oh we'll do this if your manager is like failing you or [18:46] they you know are not supporting you or they can't support you it's more like [18:49] do this because this is going to be an accelerator for yourself, irrespective of your manager. But then also it'll be an accelerator for your manager in supporting you. Because one of the things that

[19:00] you know, [19:01] it comes into play a lot when managers are figuring out promotions and doing those things it's like they'll sit in a room [19:06] often calibrations and [19:08] you know, with a bunch of people. And it makes it a lot easier when those people have had some kind of [19:13] access or exposure or whatever to you in a positive light. So these things can all run [19:20] you know, with, you know, your manager and not against, but it's just another way of you kind of taking, taking back the ability to build that momentum instead of relying on all of that going through one single other person. [19:33] What I like about your second example is you just did it. You just started doing that kind of report for the company. It wasn't like, hey, I have a proposal. Here's what I think you should do. Should we do it? It's just like, yeah, just do it. [19:44] Yeah, like ungate your knowledge, I think, is the buzzword that I'm hearing, right? And you could do that within your, I think that's an Elena-ism, like, see if we can, how many times we can, we can bring her up. But right, it's just, you know, like, you can do that within your own, you know, company, like everybody, everybody is skilled at things that they aren't, you know, explicit to their role or their space. And I think that ungating that opens opportunities. And if you're not sure, [20:10] then go to my favorite go-to, which is talk customers, get insights. Those are incredibly valuable. So rarely do people share those when they find them. [20:18] So be the person that does that. [20:20] Another area I want to chat about is [20:24] experimentation and growth and data which [20:27] makes sense you have strong perspectives on being the new head of growth amplitude.

[20:32] So maybe we start with experimentation. [20:35] You mentioned that you had there's like a really interesting, surprising results in an experiment you ran at Twilio that kind of maybe changed your perspective on experimentation and what you think might work and not work. [20:46] 100%. Yeah, I'm sort of fortunate to have two mind-blowing experiments that really shifted the way that I think about growth. [20:54] So one of them, one of my favorite ones, [20:55] happened. [20:56] very early on at Twilio. So after I created this growth team, like one of the things that I [21:02] saw as to me an issue was that under sign up flow we just asked people for a username and an email like a password and [21:09] And that was it. And that's actually relatively common at the time. This is kind of a while ago now, like everybody kind of is segmenting users. [21:16] But we didn't. And we actually there was a lot of existing conviction around that. I was like, hey, we're targeting developers, developers, [21:22] They had, you know, [21:23] They just want to do, they just want to get their hands on things. Don't put anything in their way. It's going to be disastrous. [21:28] We don't want any shenanigans here with these folks. Let's just [21:32] Let's go to the gates. [21:33] But to me, this was a really big assumption to make and very costly one. It's like, OK, if that's the case, we don't know. We're not going to know anything about anyone. And we didn't know who was signing up. We didn't know what they wanted to do. [21:43] And that hurt our ability to understand how people were performing from a quantitative perspective. You know, we were a little bit lost with prioritization. There's a number of implications here. [21:51] but is obviously a very contentious kind of space. [21:55] So I, you know, [21:57] this is the very first thing that i that i did on the first experiment that i ran [22:01] I did some research to understand, okay, what are the most important questions to ask? What would I really need to know?

[22:08] And it was stuff like, you know, what language are you coding in and what's your use case, what product you want to use. [22:14] And then, you know, there's one around like, are you a developer at all or are you something else? Because there is sort of rumors that, [22:20] We're having not just developer sign up, which is a whole other interesting kind of story. [22:24] and I you know thinking these questions it would also you know potentially be things that that are [22:29] developers signing up would sort of understand why we're asking that it would feel natural [22:33] And but anyway, you know, again, like adding anything to the sign up was very contentious. [22:37] but I really just wanted to get a little bit of data on it. So I wanted to run a test. I didn't have a team, I didn't have an engineering team yet, and none of that stuff had been mailed out. It was just me, myself, [22:45] But like I said, I had started to build a little bit of trust and [22:49] pulled in good old Andre who I mentioned earlier who because he was early employee and just he kind of had access to everything like one of those those people. And he had also was, you know, supportive of this and kind of had similar hunches. And so like the, you know, dead of the night by that I mean, like, you know, 7pm or something. [23:07] on, I think it was a, pretty sure it was a Friday. [23:09] We just... [23:11] asked for forgiveness and kind of put these questions into the sign up flow and ran his navy test [23:17] with a small group. [23:19] And, you know, I'm fully expecting, okay, this is going to like hurt our numbers, but maybe it won't be so bad, you know, and. [23:24] I'm prepared to advocate the power of this data that we're getting. And I was totally, I'm thinking of like written, started, write like the, like the framework for how I wanted to, to, to, to, to. [23:33] surfaces. [23:34] And we start to get the data for this thing. [23:36] I'm not kidding, it improved conversion. There's no personalization, nothing past it, just the questions. It improved conversion by like 5%.

[23:45] Like just improve signups. [23:47] And it was one of those like, what? Like, okay, this, like, [23:50] What is going on here? [23:52] And I actually... [23:53] dug into it and what I found [23:56] from just talking to a few customers and went through the flow and just like learning about how they felt about it. [24:01] It was actually... [24:03] For folks, it was like comforting. [24:05] You know, when you think about it, [24:07] when users are signing up for your product for the very first time, [24:11] Like it's new, right? This is new. That means it's scary. They're expecting it to be difficult. [24:16] They're anticipating that there's going to be friction and challenges and that they're not going to figure it out. They're almost like looking for the bogeyman. [24:23] Right. And that's the headspace. It's often the headspace that any of us are in when we're doing something new for the first time. Like, oh, this is. [24:29] It could be very challenging. [24:31] And so by putting in these questions, it's like, what's your language? It's like, oh, like I do, I code in JavaScript and I can select that. [24:40] Well, that's something I'm comfortable with. That would make my journey easier. Like, yeah. [24:44] Bingo. Oh, and you're, you know, that's, that's my use case. Okay. Like I'm in the right place here. Like, [24:50] You know, it was it was actually giving folks something [24:54] comforting and in challenging the notion that this was going to be difficult, just the questions. [25:00] because it was aligning to some of the things that they were organically thinking about which is [25:05] what if they don't support my language? Or like, [25:07] "Can I even do this use case I want to do?" And so it was just a really interesting, you know, the takeaway for me for this, like the real interesting takeaway was,

[25:15] The psyche of the user is so, so critical. [25:19] That's just as important as understanding your product and the broader market you're pointing to and all those things. Just the psyche of users, new people doing things for the first time in your user flow, understanding that. [25:32] It's powerful. You know, and the simple like kitschy thing I say is that, you know, ultimately the learning here was bad friction is bad and good friction is good. [25:41] right there's no such thing as being simple as just all friction is bad which is sort of kind of what i [25:47] assumed going into this. [25:49] I love that you were new to Twilio. [25:52] And he just YOLO'd an experiment to production. YOLO'd. That's... [25:57] It's a big move. It ended up being very helpful for everyone. I shared the insights from it and all these things. I shared the data. And the job conversion. [26:06] But for sure, like, you know, use such [26:09] you know, processes with caution, for sure. Yeah. The right way to do this, like advocating for the engineers here is the right way to make any changes in production is, you know, through or with the approval of engineering. But it was, it was the right move overall and definitely helped business, right? So. Yeah, I love it. That's great. I like that move. [26:30] I think we need more of that probably. I want to dig into what you actually... So what is it you changed? You added how many questions? And then what were the questions? There was a question around like, what language are you coding in? And then as an option to that, it was like, oh, like I'm not... I'm actually not coding. Like I'm not a developer. Like, so that was...

[26:46] For us, it actually gave us two really, really interesting data points. One was like, you know, how many developers versus people who are not coding or in our flow? [26:54] And then what language are they coding, which was massively helpful, not just for like growth and onboarding, but. [26:59] our documentation team, Docs team, you're gonna like what we should [27:02] You know, that ended up being a critical way for us to gauge trends. [27:04] over time and catch things before like, [27:07] You know, whatever, you know, reports would come out in the year, what people are doing, sort of see it. [27:12] And then also product. What product are you interested in using? [27:16] That was very critical for knowing the basics of how to organize someone's onboarding. Are you doing SMS? Are you doing voice? [27:23] you know, 281 or whatever. [27:25] And then use case, [27:26] In use cases, like are you doing appointment reminders or are you doing like a, you know, auto responder? Are you doing anonymous communications like for a dating app or something? Right. [27:35] So those were those were the very first questions. [27:39] Wow. Okay, so it was like four drop-down questions. [27:43] and that increased conversion. I love these examples where friction and increased conversion, like there's so few of them, like you hear about. [27:49] This could work, and it's rare. [27:51] And so what did you take away? Like, what's the pattern you took from this, like, [27:56] There's the idea it's good friction, but is there something that you're like, here's what is a sign of this is going to be good friction? [28:02] this still alleviated a problem. It alleviated the problem they had where they were coming in and worried that it was going to be difficult or that they weren't going to be able to figure it out. They weren't going to be able to get their footing. [28:12] And I'd say that that's not unique to Twilio. That's something that I think users experience at any front door, at any company, any signup, beginning to sign up flow.

[28:21] Here we go. Right. Like buckling up, especially when, you know, it's in a work context and [28:26] There might be [28:27] extra pressure on you to succeed. [28:29] or for you to make an accurate assessment. [28:33] right so you just kind of you know i think that psyche of like okay am i like in the right place is this gonna do what i need it to do like can i figure it out am i capable like that's [28:44] These are extremely common things for people to feel when they're signing up. [28:48] And so, you know, certainly, you know, that I think can carry out to any place. I'd encourage absolutely everybody to be putting [28:55] those those kind of experiences within their early onboarding not just you know for you selfishly so you can learn and segment them appropriately but [29:03] also so the user can feel more confident as they're going like hey [29:07] I'm in the right place. This is going to do what I need to do. [29:09] But I think that the carryover there is just the psyche of the user, right? And just being so aware [29:15] that [29:16] It's not so cookie cutter as what is the problem my market experiences and what can my product do to help them? There's also this other thing in the room, which is so important to people's success and their ability to succeed with your products. [29:29] in your self-serve experiences, which is [29:31] What is the mentality and the psyche of the person at the various stages in your journey? [29:36] And if you're [29:38] If you're not incorporating that or addressing that, [29:41] you will absolutely miss things or things will fail and you'll be very confused as to why. [29:47] We had a great... [29:50] experiment that I'm happy to talk about where

[29:53] like same same concept a totally different situation which is later you know in in onboarding [30:00] One of the things that we tried to do over time to make Twilio less complex was to offer steps like, you know, season on onboarding, like, [30:09] Welcome. Step one. Here's what you want to build. Great. We all know that. Now, okay, step one, go to this thing. Step two, go to this thing. Three, this thing, four, this thing. Five, bam, you're live. Congratulations. Aha, all these things. So, you know, we ship that. [30:22] and got that out there and it was like, yeah, it was like improved conversion. It wasn't like that great. It's like, man, like, [30:27] We went from there being absolutely nothing, like choose your own adventure, figure it out. [30:31] Go figure it out. Good luck. [30:33] to this kind of prescriptive thing and it like wasn't converting law [30:36] and you know sort of talk to some users and [30:41] There wasn't anything particularly obvious that was coming out as to like what the issue was. It was like, oh, yeah, like I do step one. And we did like mocks with people like, OK, no, I do step two. [30:51] But there was one thing that like I was hearing that was coming out. There's like, [30:56] feels like something. And that was that [30:58] the telephone number the telecom part developers when they were coming into twilio it was like [31:05] Things that were familiar to them, APIs, the language they're coding in, code samples, documentation, things like the bogeyman, right? The things that would psychologically trip them up. [31:16] Telecom. [31:17] Phone numbers. [31:18] Things that like, you know, [31:21] These things that just were completely out of the zone of anything that they'd ever worked with before, especially, you know, early earlier on in Twilio's journey. But even now, right, telecoms.

[31:30] very different beast for most developers. [31:33] And guess what was step one? [31:35] Get a phone number because that's step one. Any time that anyone's trying to teach me to use Twilio, like one on one, they're always going to sit down next to me like, OK, like you're going to get a phone number and configure it. And that's what anyone every time will do. [31:45] However, in a self-serve experience, when you don't have that, [31:48] safe person sitting next to you being like, don't worry, it's gonna be okay, I'm gonna take you through this crazy telecom journey. [31:53] They're on their own with that psyche. So I'm like, oh my God, tell them why I can't do that. [31:57] That sounds scary. Getting a phone number configured, like, whoa, I'm out of my desk. [32:01] Right? [32:01] And so what did we do to test this out, like test out whether that was the issue? [32:07] actually, and it's first one the MVP. [32:10] They kick them out. [32:12] of the portal entirely and put them into a docs page where we could kind of [32:17] manufacturing experience where [32:19] The first thing they saw was code, and they're in the docs, safe place, the language that they're coding in. [32:24] And then like knock in there was like, oh, get a phone number. Like, let's go configure it. Right. Not as like step one, not as like the leading thing, but sort of embedded. [32:32] And the analogy I have for this is like pill in the hot dog. [32:36] So if anyone's got a dog or an animal that you have to feed a pill to, you can't just feed the pill to the animal. It's never going to happen. But if you shove it inside of a hot dog, which looks good and... [32:49] That's exciting. Then you can get them to consume it more easily. And so this was- We do peanut butter. That's our move. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. Hot dog, peanut butter, all that. Right. You kind of bury it. Right. You embed the like scary, unpleasant thing. And so that's what we said with the phone number stuff, that telecom stuff.

[33:07] And guess what? Even there were a good amount of the [33:10] console and [33:12] they're going off and we had no easy return button, it converted better because [33:16] we were addressing the big problem that was there at the time, which is their psyche. They were not ready to come in and immediately thrown into a phone number experience that was [33:24] you know, letting the bogeyman out to party and that's not what was going to work. We needed to [33:29] put that bogeyman pill on the hot dog. And so, [33:31] And then once that validated, then we can actually go through the business of putting that into the onboarding flow correctly. And then that can work even better. [33:39] But yeah, so again, the psyche of your users, such a critical thing to be thinking about. And if something like very logical, [33:45] isn't converting well, sometimes it means that you're battling against the psyche of a user and you want to take a step back. [33:53] And I [33:54] think about and learn about where someone is psychologically in your space. [33:58] It feels like you had this experiment that was like a complete redesign of the onboarding flow. [34:04] And that didn't work. [34:05] And then your second attempt was [34:07] a different approach that's like a full... [34:10] onboarding flow. [34:11] And I'm curious, do you have a take on just when you run experiments? [34:15] And that's something we dealt with a lot at Airbnb and other places. Like, did you just redesign the whole thing? [34:20] Or is it better to iteratively work from where you are today and just experiment piece by piece towards some future, much better experience? [34:26] Here's what I say to this is that from a high level, [34:29] It's always going to be better to be iterative. The reason that it's better [34:33] is that roughly 80% of the times, [34:37] There is in the time our hypotheses and the things that we believe will be true or not.

[34:42] And this is like amazing. I mean, the, [34:44] There's an amazing article out there. I'm happy to share with you. You can put in the show notes. Yeah, absolutely. That really takes a scientific approach to proving that outcome. It's like Netflix and Microsoft. There's over and over again. [34:55] 80 plus percent. Some companies say 90 percent. [34:58] of things fail. And so, [34:59] when you, the closer you get [35:03] to something that is, you know, you kind of go bury your head in the sand or go into an attic and belt something for six months and ship it. [35:11] the more likely it is that you are going to ship [35:14] the 80% wrong stuff, right? [35:17] Whereas the more iterative you are, the more likely it is you're going to catch it sooner. [35:21] And, you know, failure doesn't have to be a wall. It can be a compass. [35:25] Right. It can be the thing that leads you to the right thing. [35:28] And so, you know, you always want to, as best you can, [35:32] get stuff in front of customers so that you can get that compass and, you know, get that compass activated, know where to go. [35:39] And yeah, and so that means doing, you know, ugly things. I tell my teams all the time. [35:44] If it's not embarrassing, you've gone too far. [35:46] right gotta be embarrassing the first thing that was embarrassing kicking people out you know onboarding spend all this money and like whatever to get them into your son of flow and then the first thing you [35:57] get out of here. Right. I mean, that's, [35:59] That's nuts, but... [36:01] If it hadn't validated, that would have been a very cheap [36:04] but very valuable learning. [36:05] Instead, it was a very powerful, cheap learning in the other direction. We're like, now we know we can invest in it. We know that's the right thing to do. [36:12] So always better.

[36:14] to be iterative so that you are [36:16] letting failure work for you instead of having it be a trap that you fall into. [36:21] I know that stat you just shared is like per experiment. You're probably wrong 80% of the time. [36:25] In my experience, [36:27] Launching a whole redesign is negative 100% of the time. [36:30] I've grown weary to avoid that as much as possible. You kind of know that. You're taught that as you [36:36] go into growth and product, but you're just like, no, come on, let's make it awesome. Just redesign this whole thing. Especially, you know, your designers are always like, no, let's start again. [36:44] Let's make it amazing, but. [36:46] It always ends up being negative and you're like, okay, well, it's too late now. We got to launch this thing. We don't have time to start again. [36:52] Well, it's funny. I mean, in the articles and you'll see like it was it was written by somebody from Microsoft who kind of built a confrontation platform and did all these cool things. Like as he went into actually trying to apply a scientific method of figuring out like how often people are wrong about their hypotheses and, you know, what they're planning to do. [37:08] He's like, I wonder if like, [37:10] that applies to us here at Microsoft. There's even for him that kind of question of like, hmm. [37:15] and it and it pour out right like it's just [37:18] I think it's challenging to... [37:20] There's a lot of smart [37:21] people in the world in this space doing things and it's very difficult to think gosh am i really wrong like 80 plus 90 percent of the time [37:29] But when you think about it, it makes total sense, right? Because what has to happen for something to be successful? [37:34] You have to understand the problem perfectly. [37:37] You have to then understand who's having the problem. [37:40] perfectly the customer at what time they're having the problem then you've got to put the right solution in front of them to solve that problem maybe you got the problem right all that stuff right but your solution something off

[37:50] Or maybe your solution is right, but maybe it's just not presented, not communicated in the right way. You could have any one of those things off. [38:00] and [38:01] it's not going to succeed, right? It's not going to have the metric impact you're expecting to have. So in that context, it's almost like incredible. We do succeed 20 to 10% of the time given everything that has to line up. [38:14] And so I think it's one of those things where [38:16] you know you really want to go into it embracing that okay this isn't about [38:21] how smart I am or how good my team is or any of that stuff. It's just, hey, the logic of [38:26] this is a you know challenging to get it right and let's embrace that and let's um lean into [38:32] Let's lean into that knowledge and make it a part of our strategy instead of fighting against it. [38:38] Have you found anything that helps you increase those odds? [38:42] Or is it just this is the way of the world and you probably can't significantly understand [38:47] increase the chances your experiment works out. [38:51] So here's the thing, I think there's very little that we can do to make that [38:56] Base easier. All those things had to be figured out. [38:59] And so I definitely think that you that that everybody is going to be in a space where their original ideas, untested ideas are going to be around that hit rate. However, [39:11] the way that you go about validating those, [39:15] can be totally different. [39:16] And you can be very fast about validating those ideas. And that's the key, right?

[39:21] And, you know, A/B testing is one of the most expensive [39:26] kinds of ways to validate an experiment. [39:29] Right. It's, [39:30] You know, often requires design and engineering. [39:33] and the PM or growth person or marketing person who's crafting it, right? All these things [39:39] or investments that take a lot of time even for simple things [39:42] And then you have the time factor. How long does the thing have to run to have an impact? So all of that is extremely expensive. [39:49] And so I think the key is [39:51] to just think through, okay, what are the things I can do to quickly validate what [39:57] what these ideas are that we can get. [39:59] And you can do that with painted doors, right, which is where you test rate the concept. [40:04] and the idea before it exists versus the actual experience you can do mocks like create have you know create you know if you've got a designer create those mocks for that experience put it in front of people see how they engage with it that can be so powerful you can [40:17] Thanks. [40:18] tons of hypotheses at that state. [40:21] you know you really want to only things the only things you want to get to that kind of [40:25] that deep A/B testing environment are ones that have been kind of vetted along the way. And that way you reduce [40:32] your fail rate. [40:33] right because you're you're failing faster by using other methods [40:37] So, you know, I think that's I more advocate for that side, like let's fail. [40:42] fast by using those tools rather than figuring out a way that you can [40:46] rise above where everyone else is operating and figure out ways to solve all that complex stuff [40:51] better because that's going to be challenging, but you can always get better at experimenting and validating things faster. This episode is brought to you by Writer. How much hype have you been hearing about generative AI? So much. But how do you take it from a shiny toy to an actual business tool that helps you do your actual job? Writer is an enterprise-grade generative AI platform built specifically for the needs of businesses and already widely deployed at world

[41:21] spot and UI path. With Writer, you can break through content bottlenecks across your organization, from marketing web pages to sales emails and product messages, to creating high quality on-brand content at scale. And unlike other AI applications, Writer's training happens securely on your data and your style and brand guidelines that you provide specific to your organization. The result is that you get consistent content in your brand voice at scale. [41:47] Get AI that your people will love. For a limited time, listeners to Lenny's podcast can get 20% off if they go to writer.com slash Lenny. That's writer.com slash Lenny. [41:59] Where do you find the best ideas come from for driving meaningful lift? Like, is it gut? [42:05] instinct [42:06] type and experience bucket or is it data telling you like, hey, here's a huge opportunity? [42:13] in your experience. [42:14] I'm a very... [42:16] like data-driven [42:17] person like I self describe and think of myself that way because you know in large part because of that failure you have to be constantly checking yourself and data is a really great way to do that. [42:26] But I definitely think that [42:28] I would be described as someone who's like going more by their gut when looking at data and results. [42:34] Just because of the way that I approach it, which is, [42:37] I'm very comfortable and very common using [42:41] qualitative responses and things like that and supplement to quantitative data to make a decision. And that puts less of a burden on the quantitative to really make an assessment of whether something was working or not.

[42:51] You know, one of the things I see [42:53] I think sometimes goes against whether folks feel them seeing things shift a little is that 95% confidence rate. [43:01] Right. [43:02] I... [43:03] Like I came from like my background in college, I was in a lab running experiments or really publishing to a journal and stuff. And we had to have that 95 percent confidence. We had to because the things that were coming out of the lab and being published were [43:17] influencing things like how we do education and how we understand how bias works and when it shows up and therefore we can combat it. Things were wrong and sitting a bunch of baloney like that can cause some significantly [43:28] bad things like false positive false negatives in that context can be [43:31] very dangerous for lack of a better word. You think of other pharmaceuticals, the 95% confidence rate belongs [43:39] in some companies and some industries. [43:42] because the risk of of you know the impact [43:45] of a false success is very high. [43:47] But, [43:48] those of us converting users and trying to upsell folks, like we're very fortunate to not have that level of burden on us and we can take advantage of that. Right. [43:58] And so there are definitely times where I will advocate for and I will push for and I will myself use. [44:04] lower confidence intervals in 95%, especially if that doubles the amount of experiments you can run in a year, right? [44:12] End the day. [44:13] these are all methods that we use to try to [44:16] validate the hypotheses that we have, [44:19] and [44:20] If you're doing a 95% confidence in a role, you're still accepting,

[44:26] a 5% you know some amount of false [44:30] Success! [44:31] do that a little bit more challenge you do a little bit more and then run way more experience if you look at the the net [44:37] of what your team is doing over the course of what you're doing over the course of a year, you will be positive. [44:42] Wow, that is a big idea. The idea of releasing the [44:45] p-value, [44:47] confidence interval for experimentation in data teams. Everyone would be happy to be excited about this, probably maybe not some data scientists on teams. Do you do that? Is that how you operate on your teams? Just like, we don't need 95% confidence? [45:02] So I'll say this is actually very critically important. [45:05] you must have this game plan set before you run something. A failure mode that I've seen so many teams fall into is, they'll run the experiment, or whatever it is, [45:14] and then they'll you [45:16] Like, [45:16] make the data fit the hypothesis, right? Or sometimes we'll learn without a hypothesis. It's like, this is going to do better things for our metrics, but not like a core reason as to why or what, you know, what exactly are we testing here? [45:31] And so this is another area where you could absolutely fall into that trap. [45:35] Let's have a ring on a good 80. I think it's good. That Laura person said it was cool. So I think that's fine. [45:41] like that will always be a trap right so it needs to be very deliberately thought of in advance as a way like hey here's we're going to validate this and always always always if you're going to [45:51] you know accept more risk of a false success or false positive false negative [45:56] You want to then be really thinking about how you're going to

[46:01] harden your validation of hypothesis. For example, let's take that one we talked about with a [46:07] Twilio where we're kicking people out and we're sending them to that, you know, the pill and hot dog experiment, right? And we're sending people to the experience to kind of hide the phone number. [46:16] Now, in that case, right, [46:18] Let's say that we were going to accept a lower confidence interval. I would very much want to see qualitative feedback to confirm [46:26] that that hypothesis was true. I want to be looking at the qualitative data from the ones where people were thrown into the existing flow and ones put into the docs, that one of them felt more confident and more like this was really easy to get through. And like they they fell from other territory and things like that. And I'd be wanting to hear from the ones who were in the other one, things like, [46:46] I kind of got stuck on that phone number. They're like, ah, like, [46:50] kind of figure this out, but it just feels like I'm out of my depth. Like I would want to be looking for other things to corroborate. [46:55] um the hard data that i'm seeing right and [46:59] Yes, it opens the door. [47:02] to, you know, whenever you open the door to more risk acceptance, you are going to have some false successes there. [47:10] But all of these things together can overall make it more likely that you're shipping more things that are going to positively influence the customer. And again, I can't say it enough. [47:20] It is a huge risk in and of itself. [47:23] to not ship as much as you possibly could in a year that is a huge risk given [47:29] that very high fail rate. [47:31] So,

[47:32] You know, I wouldn't, you know, to those data scientists and I've, you know, chatted with a few of my time. [47:36] What I try to explain is that that article, that data, [47:40] that the 80% like that's hard data, right? About what a detriment it can be if you are, um, [47:48] you know if you don't run enough experiments you could literally if you just run 10 in a year odds are maybe two around impact two of a course an entire year if you kind of take that approach so [47:58] you know, [47:58] Data side is going to understand, hey, if we do this, you know, if we, you know, this down, we can like double or triple or whatever it is, the number of experiments we can run. And overall net, that's going to result in, you know, few, you know, more successes. [48:12] that will overall net us to a positive place. Like you can still tell a data story to the data scientist about why you're doing this. Again, this is why, you know, when you ask that question, identify. It's a very data driven person. But I think, you know, some of the methods that I use can [48:26] uh you know sound at the surface level as more like oh i'm going by my gut but again [48:31] very data-driven is just embracing the reality [48:34] of some of the hard data that I don't think we all [48:38] embrace or are even aware of sometimes about that fail rate. [48:42] This is awesome. This is a big idea. Have you written about this anywhere for folks that maybe want to try this approach at their company? And if not, you should. [48:50] I appreciate that. It's funny. It's like all my general life to do is to start [48:55] writing some of this down. I have [48:57] three children, one of whom was five months old, two and four. [49:01] And so sometimes I'll start to write and then like one of them will like crawl across the keyboard and it's

[49:07] you know, like this. [49:08] by one of them, I mean, all of them, most of the time. [49:11] But eventually, [49:13] I'll be very happy to do that if folks would be interested. I'm always happy to [49:19] do whatever I can to help [49:21] folks help empower folks with knowledge to do better because [49:24] None of this is like secret sauce, really. It's just sort of, [49:27] learn from experience and it's always better to learn from others experience than your own it's faster. [49:33] So yeah, I would definitely aspire to Lenny. Is that, I think that's, [49:37] the best that I can say, but eventually my kids will get older. I hear this and maybe I can do so. [49:43] Cool. So maybe if you're watching this YouTube, leave a comment if you want Laura to write in depth about this idea and spread it. [49:49] It's your company. [49:51] Okay, I want to talk about growth, but I have one last question just along the lines of experimentation. [49:56] Is there any other, just like, I don't know, big lessons or takeaways of just how [49:59] of running experiments that would be interesting to share. [50:02] I think we kind of got into this one like a little bit, but I just really want to. [50:07] exclamation point underline it which is [50:10] that notion of kind of making the data wrap to fit like a concept, you know, [50:15] I think a lot of teams feel and are under a lot of pressure to show progress, right? And [50:22] what did you do this month? Where do the metrics move? And like, you know, and it can cause folks to feel like they have to do that, where it's like, [50:31] "Oh gosh, this experiment." Everyone's got the experience where you run an experiment, and you're looking at the data, refresh, refresh, refresh.

[50:37] Oh my gosh. [50:38] and actually perform worse. [50:40] You know, it's like not the same. And gosh, we got everyone really excited about this thing that we all like worked on really hard. Like, oh, my God, what are we going to say? [50:48] in the QBR or the monthly report or whatever it is that sort of these things, you know, [50:53] The results come to light. [50:54] And to this, I'd say this, that it's incredibly important [51:00] for growth teams to educate out. [51:03] and for folks outside of growth and leading growth especially to understand [51:08] that the [51:09] the best way for a growth team to succeed, the only way really for them to succeed, [51:16] is to embrace the fact that [51:18] They're there to [51:20] validate, to understand what the biggest opportunities are and to go after them. And that is not something that can be done on [51:27] a weekly timeline sometimes even a monthly depending on the space you're in and what's known and unknown [51:33] And so any growth team that's beholden to short timeline wins and improvement, [51:39] is always going to be dangerous. That's an environment that's conducive to vanity metric usage and massaging the data to fit. [51:47] and ones that are more successful are ones that are reporting over longer periods of time. Because any growth team give it enough time to kind of, [51:54] fail enough times to learn the right thing to do is absolutely going to have show success, real success, right? Like not that. [52:00] Okay, we're going to make this data fit, but like real moving the metrics is up. [52:03] And so. [52:04] Definitely, you know, educating out if you find yourself in a position where you are beholden to that.

[52:10] you know, share that 80% fail rate, like just math, statistics, data, like, [52:15] That is not, you know, you cannot be successful in an environment over time. [52:19] you can be. And so, [52:21] That's one thing I definitely would draw on. I ended up spending a decent amount of my pie chart at Twilio and then also at Rapid where I was after that. And I'm sure I'll spend some time at Amplitude as well, just helping folks kind of understand what is the... [52:38] the healthiest ecosystem, the most powerful ecosystem for a growth team to operate in. And time [52:43] and expectations over time is a big part of that. [52:46] When you say pie chart, it's like the pie chart of your time. Like a big chunk of your time goes to this. That's awesome. I like that. [52:51] I use pie charts a lot to describe that same idea. [52:54] Just to be a little more concrete there, what is the timeframe you think is the minimum for a growth team to be thinking across? [53:01] I think it's good, especially for newer teams, but even teams in general, commit to something that you can kind of do over the course of a year. [53:08] And, you know, low, medium, high, right, is always helpful in that space. I mean, [53:14] You know, a lot of times... [53:15] By low, medium, high. Lowe, medium, high. More like, hey, we've got a few bets that we have, a few core hypotheses, and if they take off, that's going to be our high bucket. Like, wow. [53:25] Like we think these things could be kind of lightning on a bottle here, but they could also be, you know, a bunch of vapor mist. So but until we run it, we're not going to know. And if those bear out, though, then, you know, that's that's our high. And we've got a few things that we think are safer. [53:38] you know, maybe it was sort of validated a bit in the previous year or what have you and

[53:42] you know, these are going to be the matrix system out. [53:44] So it's helpful to give people that construct. It deviates from it, very hard deviates from this notion of like, here's the single number that we're going to hit. Right. Just things that help people kind of understand that space a little bit better and what to expect. [53:59] And because of that, it can be a little bit lumpy. Like, you know, there were some things that, [54:03] you released i mean is it for the most number of years it's kind of easy to talk about this this construct here but [54:08] Like, you know, there's one thing that we did that generated... [54:11] like tens of millions of dollars in the pipeline was really really powerful and took you know some time to kind of navigate and invalidate [54:19] Other times we did like that onboarding stuff is talking about like kind of like catching those things like that was, you know, could happen on a little bit of a faster clip, but still, you know, took some time to validate and understand. [54:30] But yeah, over the course of a year, you should generally kind of be able to commit to movement, but help people understand. [54:36] the methods there so that they're not coming at you on a weekly basis being like and what did you do [54:42] these past couple days. [54:43] Okay, I got to follow up on a couple of these things. What was that big change at Twilio that led to tens of millions of dollars? This is part of the course that I teach at Reforge. Amazing. Good luck for Reforge. What's the course called? Activation and Retention. I think it's live. I'll give you a link in the show notes. But yeah, the high-level version is [55:09] This was deeper into my journey at Twilio. Fast forward a few years, kind of build up this team and

[55:18] Some cool things going on. [55:20] but I was really looking for kind of what's like the next [55:23] big. [55:23] thing for us to do? Like, what could that be? [55:26] And I noticed, you know, remember, as you know, that the question very back in the day when I asked about like the kind of developer versus not developer folks. Yeah. We saw that that little non developer little dude was kind of growing. Right. We were actually the number of people in the ecosystem who were. [55:42] identifying themselves as not a developer where we're in the space. [55:46] But very interestingly, [55:48] They were, as we kind of got [55:50] got more refined in our understanding of those folks, [55:52] A lot of them wanted to build. [55:54] With Twilio, there was a hypothesis of like, oh, well, maybe they're lost. Maybe they just want pricing. Maybe they sent a bite mistake. [56:01] And I was like, [56:02] Nope, they're here to build. [56:03] They would build, you know, and they kind of struggle through the developer onboarding and some of them would succeed and some of them would. [56:08] But anyway, it was all about identifying what did they need to succeed? If we made them successful, could it? [56:17] contribute to dollars. [56:19] One of the core learnings I'd heard from sales at the time was, hey, it's very challenging for us to get. [56:23] the kind of folks where when a developer's not involved yet to go from zero to one to get something off the ground. [56:30] But man, if we can get them to do that, [56:32] If I can get them to $1 and spend, I can get them to $5 and get them to $5 and get them to $5. [56:36] 50 like 10 000 then i can get them 100 000 this whole long journey like hey laura if your team can just get them like off the ground man we can do so much [56:45] So yeah, the journey is all about [56:48] Okay, what were the things that were missing in the experience we were offering?

[56:52] And ultimately, they couldn't write code from scratch. That was really difficult and also weren't going to stand up a server. [56:56] that was difficult but we ended up um [56:59] iteratively experiencing a way to validate those hypotheses and what's the right way to do this [57:04] And yeah, it was great. It's called... [57:07] quick deploy on code exchange. Anyone can go there and [57:10] deploy an app without having to write code and kind of get an aha moment there with Twilio. [57:16] That is awesome. So basically it's like a low-code Twilio [57:19] Out. [57:20] Yeah, I ended up kind of being like, we had a lot of like, like, [57:22] pet names like nicknames for i think probably the one that the most distinctly [57:26] describes it as just it ended up being kind of a create your own demo experience which you know made you talk about the psyche of people you know you know we talked about how developers telecom until they can be intimidating we'll talk about like this [57:39] you know, the non-developer, like sometimes the buyers or like the people who are buying decisions, [57:44] Like for them, it was like not only was it like telco, but it was like the developer stuff was inaccessible. [57:49] But they still wanted to, you know, jump in and they wanted to have an experience. And so this was a way for us to give them momentum, give them confidence. Well, geez, if I can get this running my development team, definitely do it. Right. [58:00] And so it was a very powerful kind of, [58:03] a you know moment where we can really address the psyche of those users get them excited about Twilio and then give sales kind of the ability to [58:11] give something powerful to those non-engineering buyers and folks they're talking to. [58:17] So genius looking back seems like an obvious win. I imagine it was not. [58:21] One of my readers suggested that I start a series of the story of a feature and kind of walk through the discovery, ideation, development, iteration.

[58:30] And this feels like a really interesting example of that, but anyway. [58:32] I got just a couple more questions. I know we've been going for an hour now, but I have questions. I don't want to let you go just yet. [58:39] And they're on growth. So one question is just, you worked at Twilio, which is very product-led growth. [58:46] You're going to be, you're now at Amplitude, which is more sales driven. And I know it's, [58:51] You're trying to go more product-led. [58:53] I know Elena talks a lot about this, how every company needs [58:56] to have product-led [58:58] Otherwise, they're going to be disrupted by someone that comes product-led. [59:01] And I don't know what higher is, which book they fall into. [59:04] Yeah, between the SLG and PLG. For me, they're kind of two sides of the same coin. Growth, growth, and sales. It's all... [59:15] It's all to me very thematically the same stuff. The difference is that with growth, you are selling with your product and with sales, you're selling with person like one to one. [59:25] And, you know, so so companies need to be, you know, employing both of those forces to optimally convert their audience. You know, we're in a world where people are expecting both. They're expecting to be sold by your product and sold. [59:40] at the enterprise level and large companies by a human being. It's going to listen to their specific needs and really break it out for them. [59:46] And. [59:47] you know, if you only have one, you're going to you're going to miss stuff. So absolutely, I think you want to those those two forces together working well. And obviously there's sort of, you know, different stages, you know, things work differently in different spaces. [59:59] But I think when it comes to amplitude,

[1:00:03] I think there's a huge opportunity here. I think the key is and the challenge for companies that have done like the sales thing and are trying to crack into the [1:00:12] PLG thing. [1:00:14] is, you know, [1:00:15] really comes down to how you fundamentally are approaching that space and again, [1:00:21] your users and you know the where they're at and the psyche of where they're at [1:00:25] I think a lot of companies will say, well, OK, like, hey, we're going to do this PLG stuff. [1:00:30] Let's take that sales enterprise, whatever offering that we have, [1:00:34] And let's, you know, chop it up a bit and like, [1:00:37] cut access here and like cut out this feature here and we're gonna like slap this plan out and we're gonna put a price on it and [1:00:43] We'll maybe have like hours of debates over whether it's like $10.99 or like $104 or like $75. And eventually we'll like, someone will end up battle and like slap it on because you have a [1:00:54] And anyway, the discussion and the focus is a lot around the product. What are we going to do with this product? How are we going to crack it open and shift it? [1:01:01] and then give it to these people, these users, these visitors, [1:01:06] and what it's missing, I think, [1:01:09] is and a lot of times it's easy to miss. [1:01:11] is that [1:01:12] When we're doing PLG and we're shifting from sales to PLG, [1:01:16] We need to reset. [1:01:18] We need to recognize that, you know, again, [1:01:21] This is sales, sales via the product. What does a good sales rep do when they're engaging? They understand what the problem is of the person in the space you're talking to. So we need the same thing here. [1:01:32] what are the unique problems

[1:01:34] of people who are coming into our self-serve space and i think you know when it comes to a company like amplitude [1:01:39] you know, a lot of the folks that will be kind of looking to address the PLG motion, [1:01:46] there's a number of things we want to achieve there but one of the primary things is to kind of tap into the smb market and really give them a really you know startups and give them a space to land and to grow [1:01:55] And, you know, you have to think like, [1:01:56] What are the challenges and unique problems that they have? [1:01:59] Because we're going to be using our product to kind of sell them. We need to meet them where they're at with the problems that they've got. [1:02:03] And I think one of the things that is [1:02:05] that I've observed from being in all these startups and advising some startups is I very rarely ever [1:02:13] come across a startup [1:02:14] where they have like the right number of analysts for their needs. In fact, a lot of them like don't have any. [1:02:20] And so what that means is that the CEO is, you know, being an analyst to create their dashboards for the board. [1:02:27] And the product manager is like, [1:02:29] being an analyst to figure out like what the heck's going on and creating reports for their product [1:02:33] And it's happening all over the place is that people are in their roles and [1:02:37] They have to be an analyst too. [1:02:38] And I think that that's a problem that especially... [1:02:43] you know, younger companies and early stage companies have, [1:02:48] and so when they're you know correct their psyche what are they caring about what are they thinking about when they're setting up for product product or something they're looking for something that's [1:02:57] feel reassured they're going to be able to actually get to the bottom of the right metrics create the reports that show things the right way [1:03:02] I, you know, what's the best way to show churn? There's got to be a best way. Like so many people are doing it.

[1:03:08] Guess what? There are some really good ways to do it. [1:03:10] And there are some really successful, you know, [1:03:13] ways to set up dashboards for the board. People have done that too. Like there's a lot of that knowledge that exists in all those templates and frameworks that exist. [1:03:20] benchmarking are these numbers even good right and so one of the hypotheses that i have [1:03:26] is that if we take that perspective and we understand [1:03:30] you know that that is the problem there's a number of things that we can do to really change the way that self-serve experience works to help convert people and show them [1:03:38] how Amplitude can make them kind of that powerful. But the thing that I think sticks across all companies, not just Amplitude making the shift, is just that when you're doing this, [1:03:48] Do not think this is a copy paste, but like chop it for parts thing. Don't start with your product when you're building out your strategy. [1:03:55] Start with your customers, your users, your prospects, your people. [1:04:00] who are going to be coming into your self-serve flow. Make sure you're understanding [1:04:03] how their problems differ because they do from the people that you're addressing at the sales led side and then make sure that you're orienting your experience of product around those people. [1:04:12] It's interesting that you almost have to kind of start again as a [1:04:16] as a product company, as a product [1:04:18] Yeah, because you may need to solve completely different problems that eventually lead to the same place. [1:04:23] But it's interesting what you're saying that you may end up targeting like analysts. [1:04:27] or PMs. [1:04:29] I know Amplitude has always focused on PMs. Yeah, and it's right. And there's always the nice thing about it is it's, [1:04:35] in some ways it does feel like you're starting fresh because you do need to kind of start with the customer again and like what's their problem

[1:04:41] But in a lot of ways, you know, you can carry over a lot of the same knowledge. I mean, at that point, you kind of know what's working well. [1:04:46] Amplitude, for example, does have a ton of knowledge around what some of the best ways are to set up reports. There's a lot of things that they have the momentum going, sort of like, where do you, [1:04:55] choose that momentum and how do you [1:04:58] put that and curate that in front of users and make sure that they're getting the right things. There was a ton of momentum already there. It's just a little bit on [1:05:05] harnessing it and understanding that yeah where are the gaps because there are going to be gaps. [1:05:08] But anchoring in a customer problem is, I think, the way that you start any new product, any new thing that you're releasing, should always think about the customer and the pain point. So no different than... [1:05:19] when you're doing PLG for the first time, [1:05:22] or cracking into it, you need to be thinking again, starting again with [1:05:26] the problem, the problems they have. [1:05:28] psyche that they have coming to your space so that you can build something that is going to effectively make them feel like, oh, [1:05:36] You can solve my problem. You get me. [1:05:38] and show them how your product's gonna do that. [1:05:41] Final question, and this is around developers. You worked at Twilio. [1:05:46] Obviously, TwilioSoul developers [1:05:48] I think Rapid, where you worked right before Amplitude also sold to developers, [1:05:53] Selling to developers feels like such a hot space right now. There's so many startups that are just building developer tools, such a huge market. Used to be not. Used to be like, there is not a market in developers. [1:06:01] They're not going to spend money. There's not enough of them. [1:06:04] And now it is a big [1:06:05] popular spot. [1:06:06] And so I'm curious, what have you learned about building a startup? [1:06:10] and a product that sells to developers.

[1:06:12] I imagine a lot of founders building sorts of tools would be really curious. [1:06:15] The first is that developers are just a very different audience from any others. I've seen so many people who have come in strong, done growth really well or product really well with other audiences. And like, oh, I'm going to take all those learnings out, pivot into serving developers. And that's being a very steep. [1:06:31] climb because developers are so different. [1:06:35] And let me give you like a couple just [1:06:37] fun facts that make them really different. And some of these have kind of some interesting stories. [1:06:43] One is, [1:06:45] developers, [1:06:46] Like almost 2-1. [1:06:48] Do not look at your marketing website at all. They go straight to your sign-up flow. [1:06:53] So what that means is all that beautiful context that you're setting and, you know, the product and pricing on stuff. [1:06:59] Like very, you know, very often they're skipping all of it context free and going straight to your sign up. [1:07:05] And so anything that is not that, you know, anytime you make an assumption like, oh, well, they probably know this coming in to sign up. Well, we don't need to. That's on the marketing website. Like none of that's going to apply to this group of people. They are like. [1:07:16] They're there. They're looking to do a... [1:07:19] I describe them like the analogy for this group is, [1:07:23] Like they're the IKEA buyers. [1:07:25] who when key package comes, they're not opening up the instruction manual and reading it and then starting to go through. They're in there tearing open the bags and starting to pull the pieces together and trying to build it, right? [1:07:35] They'll come up for context and steps and such when they get stuck, if they're motivated. [1:07:41] So that's one thing. And then

[1:07:44] Another one is just [1:07:46] the aversion to talking to sales and I think everybody can [1:07:50] you know, hearing that, it's like, oh yeah, well I hate sales too, man. [1:07:53] When I sign up and get bombarded by sales, that's the worst. I totally get that. [1:07:57] but I have just developers are on this whole other level. There was a, [1:08:00] There was a Fang company sign up for Twilio. [1:08:04] built a POC, launched to production, all this, and operate in that space for months without engaging once with sales. Who's trying to reach them, right? [1:08:14] And I ended up being the one that talked to them first because they reached out to support because there was something about their delivery that was... [1:08:20] was off there, missing a feature. [1:08:23] and they did not want to talk to sales. They ended up talking to me when I was in product marketing. [1:08:29] I was like my first exposure, "These people don't want to talk to sales." And then there's another one where like a giant retail company where like the engineering team signed up with their personal email addresses. [1:08:39] so they wouldn't get bombarded by sales. It was only later that we found out. But the thing that's most important, these are fun facts, but [1:08:49] But the thing that is, I would say, is the most important thing to leave with listeners here is, [1:08:54] What makes them so different? Why? What's the deal here? [1:09:00] And it stems from [1:09:03] their charter and their responsibility. So, you know, if we put ourselves in a lot of our shoes for a minute, [1:09:09] A developer, if a developer is required to use your product, especially if they're like the primary user, the primary builder,

[1:09:15] It's really important to recognize that [1:09:18] they're responsible for that. If your service goes down, that's their responsibility. [1:09:22] not just for themselves, but their team. If the pager wakes up, [1:09:26] someone because the service they bought from you goes down, [1:09:29] That's on them. If, oh, turns out that it doesn't work with the systems that they said it was. Well, that's on them. Like, doesn't integrate with the data the way that, you know, everyone wanted it to. [1:09:40] That's on them. Everyone lives a developer when it's not working right and it cannot work right in so many ways. That's their failure. It can cost them their job. It could cost them the trust of their team. [1:09:51] Cost them a reputation, you know. [1:09:53] And that means that the stakes are very high for them. [1:09:57] every time that they're adopting something new. So they can't afford to take someone's word for it, especially a sales rep who might be have some other motivations, right? [1:10:07] from their perspective, right? They can't afford to trust your content or someone's word. They must do it. They must prove it to themselves. [1:10:15] And so that's why [1:10:16] they for developers to be bought in, [1:10:19] They need to do something, build something, a proof of concept at the very least, if not kind of like moving further than that. [1:10:25] And so that means they're going to be pretty darn deep in their self-serve experience with you. [1:10:30] before they're ready to commit. And so if you're a company that is providing [1:10:36] that requires developers to build. [1:10:39] Right. [1:10:40] you must invest in self-serve experiences in order to effectively convert your audience. And you should be thinking of them,

[1:10:47] something akin your self-serve function and growth folks someone akin to salesforce [1:10:52] Because your sales developers are not going to accept [1:10:56] sales coming in. [1:10:57] and trying to convert them at that stage. [1:11:00] I love that you always come back to the psyche of the [1:11:03] user and how, you know, in this case, developers, like, here's why they're responsible for this thing. [1:11:08] Sales people are going to convince them this is going to work and it's not. [1:11:11] And, um, [1:11:12] That's a really interesting tool, and that's a really cool takeaway. [1:11:15] Is there anything else that we didn't cover before we get to a very exciting lightning round? [1:11:20] Lenny, I think we covered it all, man. Got all my questions and more. So with that, welcome to the very exciting lightning round. I've got six questions for you. Are you ready? [1:11:30] I am so ready. [1:11:31] What are two or three books that you recommend most to other people? I'm a big believer in happiness. I'll just like, [1:11:37] you know because you know being crunchy or you know we should all be happy also because it helps [1:11:43] just more creative and all of us. So, [1:11:45] 1. [1:11:46] is [1:11:47] Simple Path to Wealth by J.L. Collins. I don't ignore the data. [1:11:51] that money is something that often gets in the way of our happiness. So many smart people [1:11:57] that just have not figured out the whole like, [1:11:59] managing their finances thing and this book will cover all of your basics it's very easy to read [1:12:05] He's got an audio book that he does. He married himself. [1:12:08] Simple Past Wealth, Dale Collins. He's fantastic. [1:12:12] What's a recent movie? Oh, wait, wait, there's more. [1:12:15] There's one more. Oh, let's do it. It's always happiness, which is Atomic Habits by James Clear. It is

[1:12:22] If you ever want to change something by yourself or something's like not quite working for you, [1:12:26] this guy will give you a framework to change it. [1:12:28] Guaranteed. [1:12:29] I really enjoyed that book. [1:12:31] That guy's killing it. He was on Tim Ferriss. He had a great interview. Folks that don't want to read it, they can listen to that. There's a lot of cool tips there. [1:12:37] Favorite recent movie or TV show? Unabashedly, the great British baking show. [1:12:42] I love that show. I love that show for like all the reasons everyone loves it. It shows like heartwarming and like, [1:12:47] makes you feel good and outlifts you, but also because [1:12:50] It is a competitive show. Like they're trying to be the best baker. [1:12:54] And, [1:12:55] They're out there helping each other. They're like a big family. [1:12:59] Like I've most reality competitive TV shows that I see all of them are like cutthroat, they're sabotaging. So I'm just endlessly fascinated also by like. [1:13:09] the psychology of what's happening here. I want someone to do like a research paper on it. [1:13:13] like what gets the bottom of why they're all like helping each other it's wonderful though wonderful a lot [1:13:18] Interesting. I always come back to psychology with you. I know. I know. I feel like I'm just I'm like really, really sinking deep in there. But it's true, though. It's like very interesting to me. So and I love that show. [1:13:30] What's a favorite interview question that you like to ask in interviews? [1:13:34] I love asking about a ship or release that is not cherry picked by the person you're talking to. [1:13:41] You can get it a lot of different ways. The thing is, everyone has like a big success story. [1:13:45] Everyone does. It really doesn't actually tell you very much to ask someone like, what's a great thing you released? Because everyone can tell that. [1:13:52] Instead,

[1:13:53] take take that away what's most recent ship is a really easy one because like recency time [1:13:59] But there's other things you can do to take that out, just give them specific parameters for a shift that they shared or whatever. And that will allow you to listen more and learn more about their frameworks. [1:14:10] versus the outcomes because, [1:14:13] if you're picking a random ship, odds are it probably wasn't like fantastic. So they're going to want to talk more about how they approach getting there. And that's what you want to know about to know if they're going to succeed, what their frameworks are they approaching. [1:14:24] That is cool. I've never heard that one. That is a really clever idea. [1:14:27] What are five SaaS products that you use in your day-to-day work? [1:14:31] Can't say amplitude. [1:14:33] I know, right? Still learning which ones we have here. But yeah, I'll just share the ones that I like a lot that I've used elsewhere. So one is Hotjar. Hotjar Kuala Roo also works. Just anything that allows you to put some... [1:14:47] Quick little thing in front of customers, get that qualitative feedback we talked about. It's a critical, critical thing. [1:14:52] supplemented quantitative data to understand what's really causing the change or [1:14:56] not causing the change, AFC? [1:14:58] So that's important. [1:14:59] I will say Amplitude is a fantastic tool that I have used. I would have said that if I weren't. [1:15:06] hadn't just joined Amplitude, so I got to use it. I know. I got to use it for the first time at Rapid because we used Amplitude and it was... [1:15:14] It was awesome. So again, like asterisk, because I'm like working there now, but I do actually like it. [1:15:20] And, you know, [1:15:21] Slack, they're boring, everyone says Slack, but I just have to hand it to them, it makes

[1:15:27] life so much easier and just not their way. [1:15:31] And then... [1:15:32] builder which also put an asterisk on that one but I really want to service this a lot of people don't know about it and it's really helpful I do advise them so I'm like, you know, in their corner. [1:15:41] But this is another one I also say would be a powerful one. I think a lot of teams get stuck. [1:15:46] They're not able to [1:15:48] um they're relying too much on their engineers to make changes again we talk about rapid experimentation getting things out out out [1:15:53] and builder makes it really easy for folks to do that also like a headless you know cms you can like drag and drop headless cms so they do make it easy for non-engineers to make changes so [1:16:04] especially if you're trying to figure out how to figure out how to, [1:16:08] get around that 80% [1:16:10] foggy man that i mentioned um this [1:16:12] Builder would be a good way. [1:16:14] and then yeah if you want one more i'll give you chat gpt which is really boring and you know everyone's saying that but [1:16:20] I think I'll just say I don't have any like crazy things to say about it except that I do think we all need to figure out how we [1:16:26] pull that in to our sex at the [1:16:28] People who don't do that are probably going to [1:16:30] lose out, you know, or like, you know, smart AI, whatever bots. [1:16:35] But that would be it for you, Lenny. But if you ask me in a few months after I've actually been in amplitude for a bit, I'm sure I'd give you a different answer. [1:16:42] This is a good time to plug LennyBot.com. Someone made a... I wrote a newsletter... [1:16:47] or Dan Shipper who created the bot wrote a newsletter post about how you built this thing. And so you could go, [1:16:51] ask me questions using the content of my newsletter as answers and it's very cool lennybot.com or lenny'sbot.com

[1:17:00] Amazing. [1:17:01] There we go. [1:17:02] Well, there you go. I changed my answer. [1:17:05] Yeah, that's all you need. [1:17:07] Two more questions. What is something relatively minor you've changed in your product development process that has had a lot of impact on your team's ability to execute? [1:17:16] Yeah, the be embarrassing, like they mentioned earlier, like be embarrassed by the first iteration. If you are not embarrassed, you've gone too far. [1:17:24] that really speeds up [1:17:26] chips and helps people celebrate the unpolished as opposed to feel embarrassed about it so embracing that [1:17:35] Awesome. And final question. I know you just started Amplitude, but [1:17:38] Do you have a favorite pro tip for how to use [1:17:41] Amplitude or maybe Hidden Feature people may not know about. [1:17:43] You tell me a day to nap, but I'll say one thing that was super cool actually that someone put together on my team at Rapid, literally before I left, he put together a video of how... [1:17:54] Powerful amplitude could be when linked up. [1:17:56] been integrated with other things like in this case Hotjar and Sigmund. [1:18:00] There was like a amplitude... [1:18:02] report that that someone had kind of created [1:18:05] And there was something that was kind of, [1:18:08] an anomaly happening there, like users were kind of using something in a way we didn't expect. [1:18:12] and amplitude, one of the reports surfaced it, but of course then we want to know like, why is that happening? [1:18:17] And so we could find out what the event is, [1:18:21] And then [1:18:22] using Segment, find out what that name was, and look at Hotjar, and actually go in and get screencasts of [1:18:28] people doing that exact event. And from that, we were able to kind of form some really concrete hypotheses,

[1:18:33] about what actually was causing it. [1:18:36] Obviously, [1:18:38] Talking to customers is very powerful, but in this case, just that simple use of connecting and threading those technologies together could really get a good picture of that. [1:18:48] without needing to engage customers. So kind of the power I'd say of [1:18:52] The tip would be how you can really amplify. We get an amplitude when you use it with. So, [1:18:58] Amazing. [1:19:00] Laura, we covered a lot of ground, career, experimentation, growth, embarrassment, psychology. [1:19:06] Thank you so much for being here. Two final questions. Where can folks find any online? If they want to reach out, learn more, maybe send you. [1:19:13] an appreciation or two, and two, how can listeners be useful to you? [1:19:17] Yeah, find me on LinkedIn. I don't post a lot. I will blame my three children. Eventually, I promise that I will, but I'm pretty good about responding to messages. So definitely link with me there. [1:19:29] And then, yeah, what listeners can do, I think. [1:19:33] So yeah, I mean, I'm always happy to hear feedback, suggestions, all that. But I'll just say I also know that it's a little bit crazy out there right now, especially folks working in tech. So yeah. [1:19:41] I'm also a cause of what I might be able to do to help all of you. I know [1:19:45] There's a few questions. [1:19:46] places I advise and rapid hiring. I know of a few folks that are hiring [1:19:52] growth, strong growth people and product folks. So [1:19:56] If you are interested in learning more about that, don't hesitate to hit me up. I want to make sure that [1:20:03] I help as many people as I can in that respect because it's, you know, trying times and it's,

[1:20:08] I'm sure you've heard it and read it, but... [1:20:09] If you're laid off, this is not about you. It's not your fault. This is crazy world we're in. Things will get better. And I would be very, feel very lucky if I could help [1:20:18] even one person land. So feel free to hit me up about that too. [1:20:21] Awesome. And maybe if you share some links, we could include links to open roles in the show notes. Yes, I know there's a few that don't have JDs open yet. They're that hot off the press. But I'm happy to, yeah, service a few things there for sure. Because I know that makes it easier for people to know. [1:20:37] Awesome. [1:20:38] We will do our best with the show notes then. Laura, thank you again for being here. [1:20:43] Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. This was awesome and so much fun. [1:20:46] Bye, everyone.