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

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2024

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Tomer Cohen is the chief product officer at LinkedIn, responsible for setting the company’s product strategy, leading product development, user experience design, business development, content creation, and customer operations. He also hosts the Building One podcast, where he interviews exceptional builders across various disciplines. In our conversation, we discuss:

• How LinkedIn transformed its feed into an engaging content and social platform

• Tomer’s famous “We might be wrong, but we are not confused” mantra

• The importance of conviction and passion in product leadership

• LinkedIn’s approach to experimenting with and implementing AI features

• Lessons from Tomer’s rapid career progression at LinkedIn

• Strategies for embracing AI in product development

—

Brought to you by:

• Gamma—A new way to present, powered by AI

• WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs

• Merge—A single API to add hundreds of integrations into your app

—

Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-linkedin-became-interesting-tomer-cohen

—

Where to find Tomer Cohen:

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

• Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/building-one-with-tomer-cohen/id1726672498

—

Where to find Lenny:

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

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

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

—

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Tomer Cohen and his role at LinkedIn

(02:28) The mantra “We might be wrong, but we are not confused”

(06:45) Clarity of thought and focus

(13:03) Setting ambitious goals and overdelivering

(16:18) Transforming LinkedIn’s feed: strategy and execution

(22:03) Running experiments at scale

(26:24) Goal setting and identifying opportunities

(30:58) AI’s role in LinkedIn’s evolution

(35:38) The AI-first mindset at LinkedIn

(35:38) Developing an AI-first mindset

(44:49) Letting go of your roadmaps and allowing room for exploration

(49:12) Career growth and personal insights

(55:01) Takeaways

(56:39) Lightning round and final thoughts

—

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

—

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	I think it's so underappreciated the turnaround that has happened within LinkedIn like I check at least 10 times a day
0:05.3	What was the strategy behind it? I stuck backwards. It's like what is the potential here if you start from the premise that LinkedIn ultimately is a platform for economic opportunity that sits on top of a very strong social graph.
0:16.2	Almost every aspect of economic transaction is possible.
0:19.7	Is there anything tactically that just like, wow, that really made a big dent and people wanting to come here and post share interesting content?
0:25.2	To really set the new purpose for it, which was this is not a springboard for other products.
0:29.4	This is not a traffic jumpstart.
0:31.0	It's on an upsell feed.
0:32.3	It's really about people that matter
0:33.9	talking about things that I care about professionally the first thing we did was
0:37.6	really making AI first how do you actually like on the ground help people
0:41.2	shift their perspective and think AI first.
0:43.6	So it wasn't like, oh, we have this cool technology, what can we do with it?
0:46.2	It was like let go of what you've built.
0:48.0	Go back to the objectives you were trying to solve.
0:50.1	And now it's this technology, how can you do that objective better?
0:52.6	There's so much I want to dig into here.
0:54.2	Is there anything else you think would be interesting or useful for folks?
0:57.4	AI is the ultimate matchmaker.
0:59.2	It's underutilized.
1:00.2	It's misunderstood.
1:01.3	It's really about. Today my guest is Tomer Cohen.
1:07.0	Tomer is chief product officer at LinkedIn,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Lenny Rachitsky, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Lenny Rachitsky and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.