YouSaid · the spoken record

Peter Deng

lines on the record: 127
first: 2025-06-22
most recent: 2025-06-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“The way I say it's like, look, I don't have time to sugarcode any feedback, right? And frankly, like the best people I've worked with are the people who come into one-on-ones with me and yell at me and tell them I'm messing up. Like that's, I love that because that's there's nothing left unsaid and we're able to kind of move the ball forward of like, hey, like how do we get better from this? And I feel like growth mindset's one of those things, Lenny, that feels really hard to teach at a certain age. And this is really important to me and my family. I expect growth mindset of myself. of my kids, you know, my colleagues at work because I think it just like creates this environment where everyone is open to like, what's the one thing I can get better at? And, you know, that whole get one percent better every day can become true. And it's funny because like whenever I go to seems like ChatGPT or Uber, when I'm always the final interview for someone in my org and I partner with recruiting and developing that.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, okay. The second one I'd say is I feel really strongly about this, which is, you know, the area that I look for most is growth mindset. And I actually came to this some point in my managing career at Facebook where I realized I did make a mistake and hired someone who just didn't quite have that growth mindset. And it was really difficult because, you know,”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. The other thing is, again, in your interview process, you kind of end up looking for these insights, right? And you look for the behaviors of like, oh, are they actually going to be? Potentially able to achieve this in six months. And that's going to give you a really good lens on the picking side, not just the development side as well.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's great for you as a leader, as a manager, to be able to basically scale up the entire sort of expertise of your team.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think this is for everyone. I think it's for everyone who is a manager, right? Because, you know, if you're going to be a successful manager at any company or a leader at any company, and if you're kind of starting as a line manager or whatnot and you're kind of wanting to grow or even just wanting to, if you're early at a company, you have so much institutional knowledge. And so getting more sort of leverage in terms of being able to pass on the wisdom that you've learned is so crucial into being successful that I think every manager should approach their puts with this. Because truly, like that's, it's just good for everyone. It's good for the company to have more kind of leverage and scale. It's good for the person who is being brought onto the team because they know what success looks like and it gives them a path to kind of keep on growing.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thank you. And really, with that autonomy, I love what you said about autonomy because truly without As a leader, as a manager, your goal is to If you don't have this thing, the simple statement is not true, how are you able to build the best company, the best product?”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, every place I've been at, as much as I've loved building the product, I've taken so much pride in building the team. And it's just been so much of a pleasure. I think this is one of the two secrets that I have here”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are we getting there? Because then, if that's the framing, every mistake that is made or whatever on either of our parts becomes a learning opportunity in terms of like, well, how do we grow from this to where we want to be in six months, right? And how is it possible that I as a manager can do the right things to set this person up for success so that I don't have to be involved in six months? And I think that those three things, like, and being able to have that second order effect of like the simple razor in six months, if I'm telling what to do, I've hired the wrong person, it puts pressure on me, it puts pressure on the person, and it creates this really interesting environment and this kind of safe space to really think about are we heading towards that goal?”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's how they know they'll be successful, right? And something to kind of work towards, right? And the third thing is kind of a joint thing for the both of us, which is it kind of gives us, it helps me and the person operate on a different level where it's not, the goal is not like, did you hit this OKR or did you hit this goal? The meta goal becomes, hey, are we building, you know, are we calibrating enough? Are we actually getting to a spot where in six months like you're the one telling me what needs to be done?”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's just kind of served me really well as on three different levels, right? Number one, it's a reminder for myself when I'm either hiring or looking for the person is to keep my bar super high and just not settle. Because if I do, most likely in six months, it would not be true that I would be able to let this person run and I would still be telling them what to do, which is not what I want. That is not my desire. Second sort of effect of that is that it's I say that to people when they come on the team or as we're making the higher because you know it communicates to them that that's my bar”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally Totally, that's exactly right. And so that being said, I guess I have, I guess, on brand, I have two things I want to share about sort of hiding the right team. I have this saying, I actually have this doc that I've taken around various companies called the PXD API, which is like, here's how to work with me. And in it, there's a saying that I have, which is what I really optimize for for everyone that I support and everyone I hire, which is in six months If I'm telling you what to do, I've hired the wrong person.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be mindful of putting your team together and thinking about that as a product. And you have to really craft that. You have to really care about the team, right?”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Opening salvo in terms of like, you know, you got to get everyone who's listening out there, you got to make sure you look at everyone in your team, you look at what you need, and you have to get the best in each. And truly, like, you know, in my farewell dinner at OpenAI, I think I close with just the like, look, I don't even know what I would do after this because all the best people I've worked with are here. We have Ian Silber running design there, Thomas Dimson, you know, Joey Flynn, Ryan O'Rourke, Nick Turley was an amazing person I met there, Joanne. I mean, just I have so many people I'm missing, but, you know, Coley on product marketing, Antonio on the marketing com side, Sulman Engineer, the name, the list goes on, product operations is stellar. I'm so proud of, honestly, the team that I built there more than the products. So I just wanted to say that it's a big thing that I really care about and I hope more leaders think about that too, is like really.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really flattering to hear that from Nick. Nick is one of the best people I've worked with, period. In fact, I want to just do a quick shout out of like folks at OpenAI are pretty much the best people I've ever worked with in my career. When I took the job, I told the team this is going to be my last operating role and I'm going to leave it all on the field. And I'm just going to go all out. And basically I spent probably as much time, if not more time, on recruiting and building the team than as I did sort of think about the product. And this is going back to sort of what I said earlier about I think you got to bring the right people together to have a huge impact. And oftentimes leaders overlook this and they're like, oh, it's just a warm body. But truly, you know, people who have strengths in certain areas complement others with strengths in other areas. And when you build that team, amazing things happen. It's the most investment you can make. It's going to pay off so many dividends. So I think that's my.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, as an investor now, it's really important to see the fit of the founder to the market. Because if you put a consumer PM into like a really boring, regulated industry, they're probably going to get frustrated and they're probably not going to see it through. Whereas like there's people that you look at the pitch and you're like, wow, this is, you are really passionate about this problem and you really care about building tools for others. And this is exactly this is the Twill PM or whatever it might be, you're a perfect fit for this business. And like, that's awesome, right? So I think that, yeah, I love that what you just said in the summary because I think there's no one way to be a PM. And I think this is sort of the, hopefully this framework will give people a little bit more space to be, you know, express who they really are.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's the other thing with personality types is the ones you hear this is me. I own this, right? There's no doubt about it. I am a consumer PM and also a growth PM. That's primarily consumer. I mean, this is what I told you about, you know, the other products I've loved. I see the details that people put into it. And I so appreciate that. But at the end of the day, it's like you've got to measure things, right? So that's what I am. But yeah, again, everyone's different.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have to evolve with the times, yeah. But also, the other part of the framework I find kind of interesting is that everyone's like a primary, has a primary one and a secondary one. Kind of like one of those personality tests, right? And maybe we kind of did this just because it was hard to pigeonhole people. And I myself don't think I was pigeonholable. But I do think that people like, you know, kind of lead with one type of thinking and then also have the secondary thing that keeps them in balance. And so if you believe that and you apply it to your team, I'm curious to hear, you know, from your listeners, like sort of if this does resonate or not. And, you know, maybe this framework will help you realize that you're missing someone that you should be not missing.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To go and affect that and build the most amazing product. So those are the five. I still think to this day these hold true and we might have been onto something the day that we brainstormed this at Uber. But yeah, I'm curious to hear your feedback”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Call the platform PM, which is someone who's really deeply wired to kind of build tools for other people. And at Uber, we had like internal platforms for messaging or for building internal tools. And oftentimes these folks are overlooked, but it's like actually a really deep wiring because these are the people that are going to build the systems that are going to make you go faster, right? And that's what they love doing. And the last one I would say I used to call an algorithms PM, but now in the world of AI, I'm going to rename this to research PM. And these are like half researcher, half engineer, half product person. And these minds are amazing. So like basically they think, you know, traditional Google search algorithm PM, right? But nowadays it's like, who are the people who really have that product taste, but deeply understand the tech and the way the models are trained?”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, when it's like, I have vibes, I feel the vibe this is better, and the other one's like, no, I don't believe you. We should test this and prove it. And that's like a really healthy tension. I love, you know, having two people in a room like debating that. Like, great, we are going to get some good things done and we're going to move the product forward. The third type is kind of what I call the GMPM or the business PM, right? These are like kind of half MBA, half product. They just thought about problems from like, well, what is the incentive here? Right, and you, this is a fascinating type of mind to work with. Another one I found, it's actually more nuanced than you think. It's like there's a certain sort of archetype that I...”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is the consumer PM? So, this is the person that's like half designer, half product person really obsessed over the details. Is it delightful? Is it crafted enough? Oh my goodness, this is three pixels off. I can't stand it. This is like making, driving me nuts. Like, why is this so complex? I mean, these are the people that you think of as like, you know, sometimes the criticism is the consumer PM, but that's just one type, right? Another type, just on the side, we've talked about before, is the growth PM. These people are like half data scientists, half product person. They are kind of wired to think numbers first, and they have this kind of air about them that's like the best ones do, which is like, I'm really skeptical. Show me the data. Let's run a test and prove it. I don't believe you, right? And I start with these two in the framework because they're actually really different.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These are the five that I found to be most enduring and actually the most like kind of different, right? And when you talk about, I love the way you put this Lenny, which is when you hire the right people and like how they're naturally motivated by different things, right? And so these are the five that we came up with. Number one.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally. And actually, there was a framework around like, I think there are five different types of product managers that has kind of held true. So this is a framework that just came out of a random jam at Uber when I was talking to some of my colleagues there. And we formulated this in terms of helping with hiring practices. Everywhere I've gone, I've also been like best friends with the recruiters because honestly my whole thing has got to build the right team. So we have to really partner very deeply. And Uber, we developed this five archetypes of a PM. And to this day, I still think it's like actually exactly true. And it still holds true to this day. But is that interesting? I mean, I got to go into that.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where everyone has different sliders, and you have to create this super team where everyone actually spikes in different ways. And that is some thing that I've had a lot of success with in terms of when you create that environment and you create that vibe, you're going to get a lot of mileage out of that team.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most successful ones are a team of adventures that are just very different, have very different superpowers. But together, you as the leader are the one who's helping adjudicate any differences or any disagreements. But you know you're getting the best outcome when everyone's pulling and obsessing over a different thing. And that's important. It's important to create your balance and really kind of increase the space that you're looking at and create those healthy debates. And I think a lot of people overlook that. I think some people think of, you know, people on a team as like warm bodies to do a job. But my philosophy has always been to think about, well, what is the company need to be successful? And who's the best person who spikes at that one thing? And how do I make sure that we get that person and how do we make sure we get the other person and the other person? It's almost like you're playing an RPG.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As a leader, you have to set up your team the right way. You have to really think about your team as a product and what are the various pieces you need to really stretch the gamut of what you're thinking about. And the teams that I've helped build”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Guess the last thing I would say is I want to make sure that sometimes in the pursuit of numbers product folks lose sight of the importance of taste and craft. So maybe this is actually the dovetail into kind of building teams. But like you got to have the counterbalances, right? And it's really important to give two people on your team different charges. One is like go grow the product and the other one is wait, maintain that design, that beautiful aesthetic, that the craft that your product is known for. And that tension is extremely healthy, right? And so I've seen this at Facebook. I've seen this at Instagram. I helped create this in Instagram, this kind of healthy tension airtable same thing, but just having ChatGPT, same exact thing. You have to have that push and pull on both sides. To really stretch the gamut.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally. And I think that the reason why Growth Team is the advice I would go with rather than to build an analytics team is because if you build an analytics team or a data science team, it's possible that no one's going to listen to them, right? It's like, oh, I have these insights. It's like, well, no one really cares. But if you hire a growth leader, they are now tied to outcomes of driving growth. So they're going to be the ones who are listening and asking more questions and really partnering with that data science team to make your entire product and business more rigorous. And that just changes the DNA of your entire team.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't have X, Y, and Z thing logged. And after you have X, Y, and Z thing logged, you look at the data, you're like, wait, well, why is that happening? And then you're forcing yourself to go deeper into the analysis of doing some analysis of like, well, what's correlated with what? And what are some hypotheses? And because growth leaders, growth product leaders are so into this experimentation side, it actually is this really easy thing to do is when you start building a growth team, it just begets all of the right questions being asked. And then it starts, you know, kind of turning into all the right behaviors of taking something you've been building, which seems like it's working into a more rigorous system. So that's like the zero, sorry, the one to ten phase, I would say, that really sets you up for the 10 to 100.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Movie so many times, the same movie so many times that every one of these companies, where I remember walking into Instagram and I think Ask and Kevin Max looks like, so how many users do we have? It's like, well, we don't really know. And so it's like, well, they're a lot. And we don't really know. And so when you build a growth team and you hire the right growth leader, I've had the pleasure of working with George Lee at Instagram, you know, some early growth folks at Facebook, Andrew Chen at Uber Airtable. I had the privilege of working with Lauren, who is currently now leading growth at Notion. So I've been very fortunate to work with some really amazing people on my team. And when you hire the right person, they start asking all the right questions because the archetype of person who is a growth PM will be like, well, wait, why is this happening? And let's get the data on X, Y, and Z thing. And that's when you realize.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One to five or one to ten. So not just fully one to one hundred. One thing I found to be very helpful is to measure everything. And this sounds, again, very simple, but just like how you wouldn't fly a plane without instruments, like why would you run your product without understanding the instrumentation and how it's doing, right? And so one of the things I did in pretty much all the teams that I led, whether it was Instagram, Uber, Airtable, was all about chat GPT2. One of the first things I did was always to build a growth team. And building a growth team is really interesting because it actually is a simple razor. It's a simple thing to think about. It's like, I'm going to build a growth team, but then you're going to uncover a lot of things, right? You're going to uncover how much stuff you have not yet logged and how non-rigorous you've been looking at your entire product. And it's so funny because I've seen this.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Great question. I'll say the first thing I'll say is that it's not a binary switch, it's actually a ramp rate. And so when I've led teams, I've always believed strongly in this portfolio approach, right? And so, you know, famously, Google had the 70, 2010 portfolio approach. That may be the right thing for a more mature company. Maybe it's 50-50 if you're a startup, right? But you have to think about this in a non-binary way in a way that's about scaling up and when do you need to put more resources behind that? So every startup is going to be different, right? Every product that you're launching is going to be different. And then thinking about your portfolio approach and how much you allocate your time, that would be my advice. And it's, you know, it's really dependent on the stage that you're in. I think that actually is a nice dovetail to my second thing, if I may, which is, you know, when you're going from that stage of maybe, you know,”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's building the systems, and that systems thinking will carry you really far, or at least that's been my experience, and hopefully you find the same way. But your mileage may vary. But yeah, that's exactly right.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take the time to build them in the one to one hundred phase, help you speed up massively. And that's how you get Forex users in two years or on Messenger we put a lot of thought into the infrastructure around push notifications, et cetera. We grew that product from zero to $4.7 billion messages sent per day in about two and a half years. And I think it really is requires that forethought in building the right systems.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Different companies. So when I was at Uber, we had a bit of a spaghetti string code situation on the writer app, but taking a step back and re-architecting things of like, what are the core components and how do you actually make it so that the product selector can scale around the world? And here's a little known fact. Talk about grit and elbow grease. Uber is not just as simple as like finding a ride. If you've ever been to other country, like in India, sometimes there are no street signs. So you have to like pick up in front of this, you know, mini mart or whatever it might be. So there's a whole team that worked on pickup and drop-offs. There's a large effort and it sounds so boring, but it was so critical to Uber being able to scale because pickup and drop-offs team thought about, well, how do you do it for venues and that venues and finding that right abstraction means that you can have a scalable way to do pickups at airports and configure different venues? And those systems, when you”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't even know. It's like 12 years ago or something. I don't know the reason why it hasn't changed much, but I like to think that it's because we put a lot of time and craft into thinking about the whole sharing loop and what is the, what are the key pieces of it? And how is it architected? What's the information architecture? And what is that whole flow look like? How does it go from posting something at the top of the page to showing up in the news feed to someone clicking like and then that notifications thing lighting up red and then that repeating over and over again? And I like to think that newsfeed has stood the test of time, the current version of it, because we thought very carefully about how people wanted to interact and how people wanted to consume information and also that whole loop. And so when that happens, then I think things are built to last, right? And I think this is the case that a lot of...”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to really think before you act and build systems that are going to let you go sustainably faster. Because the zero to one is you're trying to find that product market fit. And then when you get to one to 100, you're trying to make sure you can get to hyperscale as fast as you can, right? And I've been very fortunate to be along the ride of many of these products as they were going through that hyperscale. And the analogy, I always like to use is that when you do that, you feel the g-forces, right? And, you know, some people are like, oh yeah, I'm a pilot. I can fly at 35,000 feet, but like feeling the g forces of takeoff of a rocket is very different, right? And one thing that I've learned there doing that a few times is you got to build the systems that help you move sustainably faster, right? And sometimes you have to go slow to go fast. And here's an example. So in building the news fee, the current version that we have today, it really hasn't changed much from the time that we built it.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, thank you. And that was a good When you read that off. So, I think the first thing I would say, and you know, going from zero to one is different going from 1 to 100. And when you are in the one to 100 phase, which is a lot of the time that I spend is the one-to-one hundred phase, we were able to, we were quadrupled Instagram usage in two years. That was very much a fun ride. And there's a bunch of other examples that other companies. But when you go to one to 100, I think one of the things that you really got to take into account is that you have to plan your chest moves out in advance.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm so thrilled to hear that because it's very validating because that's what we did at OpenAI 2. We were very closely tied to the post-trading team. Because of that tight collaboration that you see some of the advances of ChatGPT getting better at so many things, right? So it's great. It's awesome that we independently came to the same conclusion.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm also thrilled as a consumer because some great products are going to come out. I think that really that close tight knit relationship between at any of these large model companies, between post training and product is going to produce some really incredible stuff.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think those companies have just such an advantage because you get to work in the same building as the researchers. And I think there's that really kind of symbiotic relationship, close partnership between post-training and product where, again, more and more, it's going to be less about the raw intelligence. It's going to be about the fine-tuning of what the model can do that really resonates with people and what people want and also what the product trajectory is going to be, right? So I think that you're going to see that more and more. I mean, I think this is less about anthropic, but more about open AI. I think open AI made a great move. I am a huge Fiji fan. As soon as that news leak that she was going to join, I texted her, I was like, this is great. Amazing. Congratulations. I'm thrilled for her, for the company, for all of my friends still at OpenAI because it's just going to be this amazing leader coming in.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Forward, it's like really who has the best workflow and who has the best product, and we humans are just demanding, we want the best. And so when someone is going to come out and produce something that's so well crafted, I think people are going to pay attention”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do believe there is a. Level of product craft that will make it so that it's just worth it to switch or try something else. And there are a few products out there that I see with this. I think granola is one of them. There's so many distribution advantages that Google Meet has, that Google Facebook, sorry, Microsoft Teams has, Zoom has, but they're just these tiny little product craft delightful things that I really appreciate myself of like, yeah, they got it. They have these little edges sanded down just right and they've really figured out a way to really make it so delightful that it's like, yeah, I will install this piece of software. Yes, 100%. I will talk to my friends about this because it is so life-changing, right? And that we're starting to see that now. Again, before I would say 18 months ago, it's like, oh, well, who has the best model? But...”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's exactly right. And this goes back to sort of something I might have mentioned briefly, but you got to have grit when you're building anything, right? You got to be able to like have that vision, have that clear direction, and be able to really go chase that. I think that's really important.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you are solving something actually valuable for businesses, for people, and there's a lot of that attention that's being paid to a lot of work is being done through it, you're going to have that edge. And this is where I see, again, startups in very different markets who have this insight, who understand this very deeply and are not just trying to zero shot everything and be like, no, no, like this is how we're going to build it to make the product genuinely useful so that it can get genuinely more useful over time. And that is going to be amazing because, you know, as a consumer of any of these products, we're going to benefit.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a perfect example. There's some companies I've invested in that aren't public yet that have their own sort of take on that, which is really interesting to be able to take sort of whatever activity is in their product to get smarter at the thing that they are doing. Again, which is why I think the data flywheel and the workflow goes so.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's again we can unpack for a long time, right? Because with any product that you want to build, there's going to be incumbents that have distribution advantages. But I do have this thesis that there are certain products that will be able to break through those advantages of distribution of the other companies. But you have to kind of overcome a pretty high bar of your product has to be so much better, right? I think that's one thing. But yeah, I think the data flywheel thing is really interesting because the models would get really good at whatever data you show it. And that's one of the things that people just think that AI is such a magic wand, but no, it's like if it's been trained on the right data, it's going to do the thing that it's been trained on. It's very malleable. So being very mindful of the data that you have access to to start your flywheel going and what you can do to keep on.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly, and the flywheel part is just, you know, you can start with proprietary data, but the flywheel is really just sort of how do you continue to maintain that and generate that? And the second thing is, again, it's the workflow. So it's the ergonomics of how does it actually integrate into people's lives. And that is going to be more and more important.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that's right. And I have some more thoughts on just sort of the companies that are building on top of LLMs that are just, you know, that's a slightly different thing, I would say. I think that for them, you know, having the right data and the right data flywheels is so important.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It does resonate. I think both have to be true, but I also would say that even if you did found a company that has a huge technological breakthrough very shortly, I think that the product experience will start mattering, right? Because, you know, how long does that technological advantage last before humans wise enough to be like, well, this is not the product I want to use? I want to use it a little bit differently. And this is more ergonomic for me, et cetera. So I think that that's what you said is a beautiful summary. I also think that a point in time in a company's history will also determine what is going to be more important.”
2025-06-22 · Lenny's Podcast · From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source