👋 Hey there, I’m Lenny. Each week, I share deeply researched product, growth, and career advice. For more: Lenny’s Jobs | Lennybot | Become an AI-Native Builder and other favorite AI/PM courses
I’m excited to share that every main-stage talk from the recent Lenny & Friends Summit is now online. Here’s the full list (in no particular order):
Raise the ceiling: how to scale intent, quality, and artistry with AI (Katie Dill, Head of Design at Stripe)
How to build products on a moving frontier (Dan Shipper, CEO of Every)
The last roadmap (Claire Vo, How I AI)
The limiting factor: how to design an AI software factory for speed (Geoff Charles, CPO at Ramp)
Roles aren’t converging—they’re expanding (Tamar Yehoshua, Chief Product and AI Officer at Atlassian)
The new playbook: what it takes to be a top PM today (Robby Stein, VP Product, Google Search)
The high-impact IC era (Elena Verna, Head of Growth at Lovable)
Context is now the product: what product leadership looks like when software can build itself (Karri Saarinen, CEO of Linear)
Anthropic panel with Ami Vora, CPO, and Mike Krieger, Head of Labs
OpenAI panel with Tara Seshan, ChatGPT Work, and Nan Yu, Codex
For easy viewing, here’s the entire main-stage talks playlist.
To get a taste of what the day was like, I’ve pulled my favorite messages from attendees. Also, a little slideshow. It’ll warm your heart.
A few reflections
Now that we’re a few weeks out, I’ve had a chance to reflect on the day. Here are the top 5 trends that have stayed with me:
There’s a huge need for (curated) IRL events right now. It’s wild. I’ve rarely felt this much PMF for anything I’ve done. My sense is that the more time we spend working with agents, the lonelier the work becomes, and the more we need to find a place to connect with other humans. I heard this theme more than anything else from attendees:
“Things are certainly different now, but underneath all this technology, we’re still just ancient humans looking for connection.” —Charlie Koch
“I left filled with gratitude for the experience, the conversations, and the reminder that even in a role that can sometimes feel lonely, we don’t have to figure everything out alone.” —Hemanth Babu Shekar
“I left feeling genuinely sparked by what’s possible, and also a little less alone in figuring out what comes next.” —An attendee
“I left this conference having fallen in love with product all over again.” —Jenny Zhao
Nobody has it figured out. Should we be building software factories? Are roadmaps over? Should PMs be shipping to production? We had speakers take both sides of these debates throughout the day. But what everyone agreed on is that there’s no one way to do it. My takeaway is we’re all still figuring it out, and the best way to do that is together. We heard this theme from both speakers and attendees:
“The answer that we have come to is: it depends. It depends what type of product it is. It depends on what phase in the product it is.” —Tamar Yehoshua, Atlassian
“We don’t know the answer. We don’t think anyone knows the answer. We’re all going to discover it. And we’re all fundamentally on the same team.” —Ami Vora, Anthropic
“This is just one way. There’s so many ways to build products. You probably heard 10 other ones today that were just as valid as this one. You should decide on what makes sense for you.” —Robby Stein, Google Search
“The best practices have not been written yet. We get to do that.” —Katie Dill, Stripe
It’s never been easier to build something nobody wants. As building gets easier, choosing the right thing to build, knowing what good looks like, and caring enough to fix it are becoming increasingly important for successful product teams. Almost every speaker touched on this theme:
“And now we can ship all our bad ideas, like congratulations to us.” —Claire Vo, How I AI
“If almost anything you can think of can get built, it’s more clear to me than ever that the actual true value of PM is around judging. It’s around taste. It’s around doing something extremely well.” —Robby Stein, Google Search
“They’re not impressed if we animated something with Three.js and Blender in 30 minutes. They are impressed by us solving their problems and clever touches in the details that show we anticipated their needs.” —Katie Dill, Stripe
“The output is not the product. Customers are not buying the lines of code.” —Karri Saarinen, Linear
“Is this useful or is it just new? It’s a big thing you need to differentiate.” —Dan Shipper, Every
The PM job is expanding, not disappearing. Instead of the PM, eng, and design circles of the Venn diagram collapsing into one “builder,” each role is instead evolving and expanding.
“Roles are overlapping, but they are also expanding. . . . Everyone can do so much more than they could do before.” —Tamar Yehoshua, Atlassian
“PMs will absolutely evolve and expand their role to not just the product organization but the marketing organization, the sales organization, the growth organizations, the operational organizations. PMs will become GMs, and they will own the actual business outcome and lead the entire function.” —Geoff Charles, Ramp
“I build and change the pricing page. I build prototypes, I deploy to production myself. I do the user research, I do the analysis, I do all of the optimizations.” —Elena Verna, Lovable
It’s important to be reminded of what’s possible—and to raise our ambitions. One of the most inspiring parts of the experience for me, and for a lot of people at the Summit, was to be surrounded by people at the top of their craft, demonstrating what great looks like. This is especially important now that AI allows us (and forces us) to be a lot more ambitious.
“If we only use AI to make the things that we already make just faster, then we are definitely missing out on the most interesting part. AI can help us raise the ceiling, not just the floor.” —Katie Dill, Stripe
“The biggest constraint is honestly people’s understanding and ability to absorb what you’re giving them.” —Nan Yu, OpenAI
“I think next year is the ambition game. . . . What experiments can I run in two weeks, three weeks, that would have taken us a year last time?” —Claire Vo, How I AI
“Other conferences collect a bunch of people seeking validation that what they were doing in product wasn’t too off the mark. Whereas this group set the bar for what’s possible.” —An attendee
Also, a key lesson: every event needs a guitar guy.
A huge, huge thank-you to all of the attendees, speakers, and partners for making the day what it was. I’m so grateful you took a chance on spending the day with us.
And finally, an extra-special thank-you to the Stripe team. Their events team produced the entire Summit, and their design team made it so friggin’ cute and unique. Bringing together over 1,000 product managers and creating such a warm and inviting vibe is a special skill. Stripe nailed it. Serious high talent density over there—it’s no coincidence that I’ve had more people from the company on my podcast than any other. Thank you, Stripe.
Till next time!
P.S. Here’s the entire main-stage talks playlist for easy viewing. Enjoy!
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Sincerely,
Lenny 👋
Thank you Lenny for putting this together. It feels amazing to see the world's best product thinkers wrestling with the same questions out loud.
thank you for existing