Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Failure

Dec 13, 2023

01:01:12

Snipd AI

This podcast compilation features stories of failure from various episodes, including freezing onstage, product disasters, and failing conclusively. Guests share experiences from Airbnb, Google, and Quibi, emphasizing the importance of learning from failure, understanding user problems, and embracing the challenging parts of life and career.

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Quick takeaways

Acknowledge and share the 'B moments' in our lives to learn and grow from setbacks on the path to success.

Lessons from failure and adversity include persistence, resilience, adaptability, understanding others' perspectives, storytelling, embracing learning opportunities, and seeking connections.

A rocky career path can shape resilience, open unexpected doors, and lead to meaningful opportunities.

Deep dives

Importance of Recognizing B Moments

Gina Gothelf emphasizes the significance of acknowledging and sharing the "B moments" in our lives. While we often highlight our achievements and successes, it's essential to recognize the challenges, failures, and uncertainties that make up our journeys. Gina shares her own B moments, including dropping out of college, facing rejection from job applications, losing visas, getting fired, and struggling financially. By embracing and sharing these moments, we can learn and grow, understanding that everyone experiences setbacks on their path to success.

The Pitfalls of Underestimating Project Duration and Skipping Discovery Phase

01:26

Focus on Understanding Users' Problems

01:31

The Importance of Recognizing the B Side of Your Career

01:37

Embracing Ship Fast, Ship Early, Ship Often Culture

00:34

Introduction

3min

Learning from a Challenging Leadership Experience

5min

Surviving Stage Panic and Embracing Failure

22min

Analyzing the Failure of a Product

4min

The Importance of Failing Conclusively

5min

Understanding Problems Before Jumping to Solutions

6min

Embracing the B Moments

8min

Learning from Failure: Lessons from the Growth Team

9min

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.lennysnewsletter.com/p/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 podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

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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

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