Failure

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2023

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this special compilation episode, we delve into failure—an overlooked source of wisdom. From freezing onstage in front of thousands of people, to coworkers staging an intervention, to huge product investments that went to zero, we’ve pulled our favorite stories of failure from 100+ podcast episodes. I hope these stories serve as a gentle nudge to view failure not as a setback but as a crucial detour toward growth.

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Brought to you by Sendbird—The (all-in-one) communications API platform for mobile apps | Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments

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Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/failure/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, you’ll hear from:

(00:00) Lenny: Why I’m focusing on failure

(03:25) Katie Dill: The single meeting that changed how Katie leads forever

(08:03) Paul Adams: Freezing onstage in front of thousands of people

(18:38) Tom Conrad: Lessons from Pets.com and Quibi—two of the most famous product disasters of all time

(33:19) Sri Batchu: When you fail, make sure you fail conclusively

(39:00) Jiaona Zhang (JZ): One of the biggest product misses at Airbnb

(44:32) Gina Gotthilf: Everyone has an “A side” and a “B side,” and we should all share our B sides more

(57:57) Maggie Crowley: Her favorite interview question about failure, and lessons from a personal failure

(1:00:33) Thanks for listening

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Today we've got another very special compilation episode.
0:06.2	Something I've been pulling on more and more with the podcast and the newsletter in case you've noticed is failure.
0:11.6	Normally I spent a lot of time researching how the best companies and the best product leaders operate,
0:17.0	but you can learn a lot and often a lot more from failure.
0:21.0	And so what we've done with this episode is we've looked at all of the past
0:24.6	episodes we've done and pulled out all the most interesting and insightful stories
0:28.4	of failure and turned it into this very focused episode on failure. I hope that you find this useful and
0:35.2	interesting. Let us know what you think in the comments on YouTube or on Lenny's newsletter
0:39.2	com or just let me know on Twitter. If you like this, we'll keep doing this.
0:43.1	If not, we'll probably not.
0:44.8	Either way, I hope you enjoy.
0:46.5	Before we dive in, here is a short word
0:48.6	from our wonderful sponsors.
0:52.0	Let me tell you about a product called Sandbird, the all-in-one communications
0:56.0	API platform designed for both web and mobile apps. In a world saturated with
1:00.6	multi-channel communication, product teams are discovering the effectiveness of in-app communication.
1:06.2	With Sendbird, businesses can elevate their in-app experience
1:10.0	with decluttered and branded communication,
1:12.4	featuring AI-powered chatbots, one-way messages,
1:15.4	chat, video calls, and live stream capabilities all tailored for commerce, marketing, and top-tier
1:21.1	support.
1:22.1	Forward-thinking companies such as Hinge, Patreon, Yahoo, Accolate, and more.
	...

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