Product lessons from Waymo | Shweta Shrivastava (Waymo, Amazon, Cisco)
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career
Lenny Rachitsky
5 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 9 April 2023
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Brought to you by Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security | Public—Invest in stocks, treasuries, crypto, and more | LMNT—Zero-sugar hydration
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Shweta Shrivastava is a Senior Product Leader at Waymo, an autonomous driving technology company backed by Alphabet. Prior to joining Waymo, she was the CPO of Nauto, where she also worked on AI-assisted driver tools. Shweta has worked in product for over 15 years in senior roles at several companies, including Amazon and Cisco. In today’s episode, we discuss:
• How Waymo builds trust with riders
• Product management at Waymo vs software-only products
• The state of self-driving technology
• The importance of being a disruptor and why large companies need to disrupt more
• Underrated product management skills
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Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/product-lessons-from-waymo-shweta-shrivastava-waymo-amazon-cisco/#transcript
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Where to find Shweta Shriva
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shshrivastava/
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Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Shweta’s background
(03:47) What Shweta and her team are responsible for at Waymo
(05:30) About the autonomous driving vehicle hardware, software, and simulation tools
(08:14) Differences in working at Waymo vs. a more traditional software company
(11:02) How Waymo builds trust with riders and the difference between driver assist and fully autonomous
(13:57) An example of how Waymo builds trust with riders
(15:55) The commercial, operational, and system behavior metrics Waymo uses
(20:38) What are L5 autonomous vehicles and why Shweta thinks L4 vehicles are good enough
(22:53) How to keep investors enthusiastic when it’s a long-term investment
(25:24) Building successful teams and successful products
(26:39) Determining what you’re not building, especially before product-market-fit
(27:49) Why large companies need to disrupt their own models
(29:33) The most underrated product management skills
(33:07) Tips for getting promoted
(35:19) Where is Waymo and how to try it out
(36:46) Lightning round
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Referenced:
• Waymo: https://waymo.com/
• Nauto: https://www.nauto.com/
• Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Working-Backwards-Insights-Stories-Secrets/dp/1250267595
• Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers: https://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-3rd-Disruptive-Mainstream/dp/0062292986
• The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Technologies-Management-Innovation/dp/1633691780
• Top Gun: Maverick on Amazon Prime: https://www.amazon.com/Top-Gun-Maverick-Tom-Cruise/dp/B0B18G8R9B
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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 | Are you're practically trying to challenge your own assumptions? |
| 0:03.1 | It's extremely important, right? |
| 0:05.1 | As a beginner product manager, as well as a seasoned product leader, |
| 0:08.6 | if you're not doing enough of that, |
| 0:10.8 | then I think you might not be listening. If there's no conflict, if there's no |
| 0:14.0 | contention, then something is missing. |
| 0:17.0 | Welcome to Lenny's podcast where I interview world-class product leaders and growth |
| 0:25.0 | experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's |
| 0:28.3 | most successful products. Today my guest is Shweta Shrvastava. Shweta is Senior Director of Product Management at Weymo, |
| 0:35.8 | which if you're not familiar with Weymo, they are building self-driving cars that are already |
| 0:39.7 | live on the streets in San Francisco, LA, and Phoenix. |
| 0:43.6 | I actually got to take a ride in one ahead of this chat, |
| 0:46.1 | and you'll hear all about that in this episode. |
| 0:48.1 | Before joining Weimo, Schweta was chief product officer at Nalto |
| 0:51.7 | and AI started focusing on driver and automation safety. |
| 0:54.4 | Before that she was head of product management at Amazon Web Services for their database and |
| 0:58.6 | analytic services and before that she was at Cisco. In our conversation we delve into what it's like to work as a PM at WAMO, |
| 1:05.7 | and how it's both different and similar to software-only products. |
| 1:09.1 | We talk about their KPI's and goals at WAMO, including how they track progress towards a future of self-driving |
| 1:14.3 | cars, how they build subtle cues and behaviors into the cars to create trust for the rider and |
| 1:19.0 | also for other cars on the road, Plus Strutta's biggest lessons about building products and |
| 1:24.3 | teams across the many companies she's worked at. I can't wait for a future of |
... |
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