Cool Gray City of Love is a kaleidoscopic homage to San Francisco, weaving together personal history, deeply researched history, and lyrical prose. The book explores the city's diverse landscapes, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Tenderloin, and delves into its rich past, including the Gold Rush, the Beats, and the dot-com boom. It serves as both a walking tour and a celebration of place, offering insights into the city's unique character and its impact on those who live there.
The book tells the story of Alex Rogo, a factory manager who is given three months to improve his underperforming plant or face its closure. With the guidance of his former physics professor, Jonah, Alex learns to apply the Theory of Constraints to identify and manage bottlenecks in the production process. Through this approach, Alex and his team transform the factory, improving efficiency, reducing inventory, and increasing profitability. The novel uses the Socratic method to teach fundamental business concepts and emphasizes the importance of continuous improvement and critical thinking in management[2][4][5].
Shape Up is a book by Ryan Singer that provides a practical framework for managing software development projects. It emphasizes the importance of shaping work to fit within fixed time constraints, rather than fixing the scope and letting the time vary. The book introduces a three-stage process: shaping, building, and batting, which helps teams focus on delivering valuable work efficiently. Shape Up promotes a more collaborative and autonomous approach, empowering teams to make decisions and solve problems independently. The book's principles have been adopted by numerous teams and organizations seeking to improve their product development processes.
Brought to you by Pando—Always on employee progression (https://www.pando.com/lenny), Notion—One workspace. Every team (https://www.notion.com/lennyspod), and Lemon.io—A marketplace of vetted software developers (https://lemon.io/lenny).
Vijay Iyengar is Head of Product at Mixpanel, and similar to myself, came from an engineering background before transitioning to product. In today’s episode, he explains how Mixpanel has evolved its growth strategy from a fast-paced, feature-focused approach to a more deliberate approach that prioritizes design and user experience. He also shares how Mixpanel irons out customer problems, including implementing internal tools that allow engineering and product teams to respond to customer feedback directly. Additionally, Vijay shares his top SaaS products, books, frameworks, and more. Tune in to gain valuable insights from a seasoned product leader.
Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/an-inside-look-at-mixpanels-product-journey-vijay-iyengar-head-of-product/#transcript
Where to find Vijay Iyengar:
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/vijayiyengar
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vijay4/
Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
Referenced:
• Mixpanel: https://mixpanel.com/
• Figma: https://www.figma.com/
• Notion: https://www.notion.so/
• “Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work That Matters”: https://basecamp.com/shapeup
• The RICE prioritization framework: https://www.productplan.com/glossary/rice-scoring-model/
• BigQuery: https://cloud.google.com/bigquery
• Census: https://www.getcensus.com/
• Zoom: https://zoom.us/
• FigJam: https://www.figma.com/figjam/
• A Data Stack for PLG teams: https://mixpanel.com/blog/data-analytics-product-led-growth/
• Product analytics in the modern data stack: https://mixpanel.com/blog/mixpanel-partners-with-census-to-bring-product-analytics-to-the-modern-data-stack/
• Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com/en/
• Amazon Redshift: https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/redshift/
• Event-Based Analytics: https://developer.mixpanel.com/docs/under-the-hood
• The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement: https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0884271951
• Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco: https://www.amazon.com/Cool-Gray-City-Love-Francisco/dp/1608199606
• The West Wing Weekly podcast: http://thewestwingweekly.com/
• WeCrashed on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/wecrashed/
• Severance on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/severance/
• Gibson Biddle on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/gibson-biddle-on-his-dhm-product-strategy-framework-gem-roadmap-prioritization-framework-5-netflix-strategy-mini-case-studies-building-a-personal-board-of-directors-and-much-more/
• Shishir Mehrotra on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-rituals-of-great-teams-shishir-mehrotra-coda-youtube-microsoft/
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Vijay’s background
(04:07) How Vijay learned to be more open-minded to new ideas
(06:26) Mixpanel’s journey
(12:40) When to optimize for speed
(13:49) The feature phase vs. the design phase
(17:02) The importance of not losing focus on your core product
(19:52) How Mixpanel organizes teams around buckets of problems
(20:43) Mixpanel’s most recent six-month time horizon planning cycle
(25:08) The RICE framework for prioritization (and when to ignore the C and E)
(26:31) The problem with estimations, and why Basecamp suggests using a six-week time box
(30:04) How Mixpanel keeps product teams and engineers connected to customers via Slack
(33:21) SaaS tools Mixpanel’s teams use
(34:54) The biggest product analytics mistakes
(37:34) The present and future of analytics
(41:05) How adopting a product mindset has helped Vijay grow his career
(41:47) Lightning round
Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.
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Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career 
