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Vlad Loktev

lines on the record: 102
first: 2024-09-01
most recent: 2024-09-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I bet on people. So for me, like that's always one of my learnings. I love meeting people that take me into a whole new dimension that I didn't even think was possible. Now, I do love consumer because a lot of that is my background. And so I try to focus on consumer. But at the end of the day, I'm focused on people. And so I go into many different directions where people think.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hit me up if you want to chat on LinkedIn. I'll respond and we can like grab a coffee or zoom or something. I mean, I'm an investor now and like I love spending time with early stage founders. A lot of those early stage founders actually happen to be product managers at some point in their career. So I just like love chatting with folks about the problems they're facing or the ideas they have when they're thinking about starting a company. So yeah, if you're tinkering with cool things, like hit me up and would love to chat.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I kind of shared maybe a little bit of it. I absolutely love Survivor. And so I have tried to get on Survivor multiple times. And that is actually my dream to get on that show. So if anyone out there watching who happens to cast for Survivor, like, I am here. I am available. And I will probably not do very well, but maybe I'll be entertaining. I don't know.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You never know. And it's a very simple motto. And what that means is to me Even when there are things with low probability, shoot your shot, take a chance, take a leap. Sometimes you're going to be surprised at how things turn out.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just chatting with players and like actually hanging out. Yeah, love Discord. The product that I recently got introduced to is a game. It's actually a pseudo boardish game called Gobbler. It's an advanced version of Tic Tac-Toe. And so me and my four and a half year old daughter play this before bedtime like every single day. She just started schooling me at Tic Tac-Toe. And so I needed to upgrade. Gobbler, if you haven't played it, adds a new dimension where like pieces can gobble other pieces. It's almost like playing in 3D a little bit. It is super fun to play.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, one is actually a product that I cannot live without. I discovered this in 2016 Discord. I cannot live without Discord. It is one of the products that I use for hours and hours every single day. I'm in all these like gaming communities and it's so much fun.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably everyone's probably a bird of survivor at this point. The show is not dying. It is actually very fun to watch, and there's new twists every single season. So I've probably watched like, I think like 35 seasons or so.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, like, I'm deeply thankful for the experiences that I've had. I mean, I've learned so much. I mean, I think, you know, I look back and there are definitely many lessons, but let's also be real. Like a lot of it is luck, right? And a lot of just stuff just happens and it happens to go your way. So when things are hard, the one thing that I just want to maybe share is don't be too hard on yourself and cut yourself some slack, you know? As long as you're waking up and you're actually pouring your heart and soul into something and you're truly giving it your all, like that's all you can really do.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You got to like find joy in the little things again. And if you don't find joy in little things, I don't think you can show up with an open mind and the curiosity that you need to be successful in whatever job you have.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ironically, I started spending less time on work and I became way more effective because I was just more centered like as a person. So I reached out to people who I lost touch with. I spent much more time with my wife and my parents. I started gaming again and like all the little hobbies that I lost along the way. And it just made me happier. And because I was happier, I felt like every hour as a result was much more impactful like at the end of the day. So yeah, like that's one thing that I think about quite a bit. Like you can't just, it's really great when you pour your heart and soul into something. I think it is very fulfilling, right? Also, you got to think about how to balance yourself as a And if you lose sight of everything else in your life, it's the recipe for disaster.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just realizing that, you know, was tough. Like, I lost friends, I lost a lot of relationships. I lost many of my hobbies. Like I didn't spend as much time as I wanted to with my family and my parents. And at some point, I was just like, you know, I think in order for me to be a better leader, I just need to be a much more balanced human being. And that's where.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were still scaling very, very quickly. And I just felt like I don't know. I wasn't like keeping up as much as I was in like maybe the earlier days, you know? And I would say I remember thinking to myself like, oh my God, am I going to tap out in 2018? Like, is this it for me? Like, you know. And it was, it was just hard for me because I was also a perfectionist. I wanted to help as much as I could. I had great like ambitions and dreams that are like I'm going to keep going with Irving View for a very long time. And I think in that moment, I kind of hit rock bottom at some point. And I actually remember. Like during that time, realizing that so much of my identity was Airbnb and my job, that I had trouble separating myself as a human being from my work. And it was”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I failed a lot. Like we've talked about the positives that were also on my journey a lot of humbling moments, still have them, lots of failure. I would say The one moment I remember, this was probably in like 2018-ish. This was at Airbnb. It was a pretty dark time for me. And I felt overworked, overwhelmed. And I just wasn't a happy person, you know. This was a time where”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, we had many product managers internally always say, Oh, we feel like we're doing very tactical work. We want to be much more strategic. And like, this change actually makes the job significantly more strategic.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Conveying what you're building in a compelling way to people, it's a craft on its own. And you have to build that over time. And so there are many product managers that haven't exercised that craft. And so of course, they can't just immediately like snap their fingers and become good at it, right? It takes years to learn that skill. Kind of again depends on the people, it depends on the organization. There's no blanket statement, in my opinion, where it's like PMM is the way or PM plus PMM is the way. It depends.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It highlighted the importance of marketing, or maybe just it wasn't as highlighted before, but it was already happening at the company. So, you know, for a lot of the product leaders at the company, it was very liberating because now you actually don't need to worry as much about, let's say, timelines and coordinating things across teams and departments and functions, that there's a function that does that. And your job is a lot more like user-centric and thinking through how to tell the world about what you're building. And so it was a welcome change broadly. Now, does that apply to every company and like PMs do things this exact way? No. It depends. I think it's actually challenging to find product managers who are also really good marketers. And so I think it's actually like a rare skill set. And like the art of marketing and the art of talking like.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I kind of felt like that was reading about this in the news when it blew up. I mean, it felt a little overblown to me, to be honest. Just like you said, a lot of PMs at the company were thinking about how to talk to users about the products they were shipping. And they were basically marketers to some degree, right? So I would say their rebranding of product manager, it did do some important things like shed project management and establish an entire function that focused on making sure things are moving in the right direction from a project perspective.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Great insight that other people do not and immerse yourself in a lot of those decisions, right? And there are some things that you might need to let go of, right? That are maybe like not as important or maybe certain things that you just you won't add. So it's just being thoughtful about where you spend your time and leverage, leverage your strengths, basically.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think what you need to recognize, right, is which decisions What part of the company? Do you have special, like do you spike on and where you have edge and where you can help make the best decision? And then I would argue then as a leader, then it is your job to be involved in those decisions, right? For Brian, he always spiked in product, in design and marketing, right? So it was very natural. This is why he like he was basically the CPO, right? That's why he was in all those decisions because those were his spikes. And that's where he helped everybody move forward in a certain direction. I think for founders, like you just need to recognize, what are the specific things that you have this?”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you were to go back to semantics and say, hey, were we top down, bottom up? Those are just semantics. Like, I would say we were actually, like, if you really think about it, we were neither. Because bottom up, you could always through certain channels voice information. Again, if you didn't self-censor and you were not afraid to poke the bear, you had an ability to voice information. So from that sense, there's lots of information that came bottom up. But then at the same time, there was also like a lot of conviction and intuition and context that came top down. And because for a lot of these decisions, there was so much conversation. The reality is I think the way we operate was actually somewhere more towards the middle on a day-to-day basis, which is why for me, I thought it was great.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Brian always wanted to make sure that Every leader would be able to make decisions and have really good judgment. And he wanted to teach what that meant. And I actually really appreciated that over the years. Now,”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you're working on many things, it is challenging to be in all the detail, right? And if you mandate that product cannot ship without certain people being in every single detail, sometimes you could slow it down, right? And that could be a con of that way of working. I would argue for us at Airbnb, the quality of what we were releasing kind of suffered because we were just push, push, push, ship, ship, ship, and people were shipping across the board. And I did feel as a leader, like I wasn't proud of some of the things we were shipping. And so I appreciated the intentional slowdown at the expense of our goals to get to a higher quality bar and then amp up velocity again after everyone had a better understanding of what quality actually was. So we kind of had to slow down for a bit. To then speed up later. And I think a lot of it is”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bring to light information that's going to help somebody make the right decision, right? So that's why top down and being in the details to me, there were actually very connected and they made a whole lot of sense. Now, the one thing I'll say is like at some point.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He wanted every leader to be in the details. Why did he stress that for himself and every single leader on the team? It's because when you get into that room, right, and you start discussing many different directions you can go, if the leaders in that room can't tell you what's actually happening with the business, then why are they there in the first place, right? Like you can't then make a good decision with that group of people. So then suddenly your team of like 10, you have to blow up to a team of 30. And if those people are not in the details, then you got to like what bring in like 50 people. And so At some point, you need to make sure that leadership is actually in the details, understand what's happening, and can help”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As a leader, like at Airbnb for so long, I never felt like I wasn't listened to or like he was just making these random decisions. I always had an ability to influence, an ability to voice where I felt like the company should go. So, yes, he made a lot of decisions, but he made sure he was informed in those decisions. And then many of us were contributing to all the information he needed to make the decision, which is then also why.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In that room where we made many of the hard decisions with Brian, the reality was he asked a shit ton of questions, right? Again, he didn't advocate in the beginning. He would come in with tons and tons of questions. And he would listen. And of course, sometimes like he would disregard certain things that he heard because he had very strong conviction a different direction. But he listened. And oftentimes he would also change his mind, right? And so”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like going and double clicking into Airbnb and where we moved. So I think one of the things that Brian mentioned was being top down, right? I actually think Top down is this construct that has negative connotations associated with it quite a bit. And it's often, at least in the context of Airbnb, I think misunderstood. Like what people think top down, and I've had many, by the way, many of these conversations with folks, right? So most people think, oh, there's a leader here in an ivory tower sitting somewhere, divorced from the team making a whole bunch of decisions, right? And everyone else is like powerless and can't do anything. That's not actually a reality, right? Of top down.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And oftentimes those opinions differed. And so because we never actually stated like the Airbnb way for a very long time, sometimes it would be chaotic, right? Like people just wouldn't know how to operate. And then you go from team to team. Teams would just operate very, very differently. And that was a problem. I think here the lesson for me was not necessarily like there is one way to like every company should operate like this way. And it's much more about picking an explicit way to operate and then voicing it to every single person so that everyone has clarity on how to do their job. I think the worst thing is like people just don't have clarity on how to do things day to day. They don't know how to drive impact. And they're just like, what am I doing with my life? You know, so that was kind of one lesson. Now specifically.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How a company operates is so unique to the founders, to the leadership team, to all the employees, and the domain potentially, the moment in time, because like how companies operate also evolve sometimes over time and just certain different ways of operating might be needed, right? So I wouldn't just copy someone else's way of operating. Even like at Airbnb, it was just very interesting for us. It took us a long time to figure out how to operate, right? And we were actually, we did it for a long time explain and give clarity to people of how we should even operate in the first place. Because so we hire people from Facebook and Amazon and Google and like Netflix, like every Apple, like every company, right? And every person would come in.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so first, I guess let me zoom out of Airbnb for a second, and then we'll go into the concrete details of what Brian said. I don't think you should copy another company's ways of working. Like the reality is it is”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, it was also very telling how I remember it was an honor internally to be selected to be a core values interviewer in the first place. Most people, large companies are like, I don't want to do any more interviewing. Oh my God, like interviews all the time. Here, people were like, it was a sense of this emotional proud moment when you were basically given the keys and you were somebody said, hey, like we actually think you would be fantastic at helping us think about how to make sure every single new hire embodies these core values. I think that was so powerful.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. What I also really liked is that there were tangible examples always of what it meant to embody this core value in your day-to-day work, right? And so then it was like very tangible for people versus just some overarching, like embrace the adventure. Like, what does that actually mean, right?”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tenure basically, even when we had thousands of people already at the company, when we were hiring people, everybody had to pass core values interviews. So it was very ingrained in how we hired and what we looked for. Then even performance reviews and promotions, no matter how much impact you made, right? No matter what you did, if you were not also exemplifying core values, you didn't get promoted, right? You didn't get to the next level. And so even in our performance conversations, those core values were very present in the day-to-day. And then, of course, they were also printed everywhere. They were just like physically everywhere all the time. So I felt like every single person around me always knew what the core values were. And so that's my biggest advice. It's like, don't copy some other company's core values. Instead, just be intentional about what matters to your organization and then make sure that those core values are freaking everywhere, part of every.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say there's no single playbook. I would say the one thing that comes to mind is being really intentional and thoughtful about it and actually dedicating energy to it. Just as much as you spend time building product, hiring people is you got to spend just as much energy actually thinking about culture and your core values. And so core values are very, I would say indicative of what the culture will be. So those two are very linked, right? And once you have, once you think about core values, I remember what worked really well was you don't just like write your core values in the document somewhere and then no one ever opens it. You need to, the key is regardless of what the core values are, you want to make sure that those core values are prominent in just about every single thing that you do, right? So when you hire people, you hire for certain core values. And at Airbnb, we had core value interviewers up until, I mean, my entire”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Amazing moments of the entire journey. And it like, I immediately felt accepted. And I wanted to contribute to the team, you know. And a lot of the reasons why there were many moments like that throughout my 10 years. And it was a result of how we hired people for certain core values and were very intentional about just helping people integrate into this crazy company that was growing super fast.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it was just this thing where I remember it was my first day and I was standing behind like this giant wall and there was silence in, I think it was a cafeteria. It was like this huge, huge room, right? And then somebody, like this engineer runs up to me and says, hey, go around to the other side of the wall. And I turn and suddenly the room just explodes in cheering and clapping and everyone yelling my name and everyone is like basically doing a human tunnel with their hands literally every single person. That was my first day. And here I am like, I don't know, 12 years later, 13 years later, I still remember that as one of the most”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, it's so interesting. Like, when I think back to my 10 years, things that I actually remember the most are these moments with other people and not the some project or some product launch that's like going super well or us doing really well with metrics. It was the things that really made, I think, Airbnb special and I really now that I think back through to those 10 years of my experience, I deeply just resonate with are those little moments. And like one example, and this is why culture is just so important, because these things don't just happen organically. Like you have to be thoughtful about building culture. And then I think you create a place where these little things can happen. So for me, I don't know if you remember your experience when you first joined the company, my most memorable experience of Airbnb is the human tunnel.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I always thought about it as the combination or almost like this Venn diagram of like there's one circle which is like all the different priorities that are important. Then the other circle are your thrends and where you spike. And the intersection of the two is the place where you should be, right? And sometimes you're not quite there at the intersection and you're kind of gravitating towards that intersection. You're building a specific skill that you're ready naturally like pretty decent at, but you definitely want to double down on it as you're learning more about the priorities and there's a match there. The worst thing I think you can do is just like sit in a job where you're not being impactful. You're not working on a top priority. And like you're just kind of wasting your life. You know, like our time is short on earth. Like you might as well wake up every day and work on the hardest thing you can where you can truly based on who you are and the spikes you have.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Strategy changes, work exchange, teams change. Everything changes all the time. And the one constant, I think, is actually the mission. And when shit gets really, really hard, when your company almost collapses like we did during COVID, the thing that gets you through those hard times is the mission. If you don't have mission, you don't believe in the mission, you lose meaning in your day to day and you start to disengage from the company. So, I think that's actually the most important thing.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The one thing that is universal for me and always has been is mission over domain expertise. Basically, mission over domain expertise, mission over skills. I think that if you have like a raw, like that raw horsepower and you're deeply Like you just love the mission so much. You can build whatever skills are necessary for the job. And so I actually love taking, as an operator, I've loved taking bets on people who are maybe earlier in their career, who have energy, who have drive, and who are deeply thoughtful and deeply resonant with the mission that we're working on. Because at the end of the day,”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think you want to certainly study different ways of organizing and the pros and cons, but just know that no matter which choice you make, it's going to suck and there are going to be organizational problems, right? And you just need to go into it with wide open eyes and then create process to make sure that whatever the cons are, like if people are in silos, well, then you got to have a really There's all these other things that I would say are much more important to focus your energy on.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think incentives come down to culture. And it's what you set as the fiber of your organization. So again, I think you can align incentives and people will be excited to make impact in the organization regardless of how an organization is actually organized.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One learning was if you're having a problem and you're trying to solve this problem, reorganizing and like a new org chart is rarely the solution. Like it's not about the boxes and how you configure the boxes, right? It's about the people in those boxes and it's about how those people work together because you just need to understand the cons of working a certain way. And then how do you design a process around your orchestra to make sure that people connect and work really well together? So my advice there also to founders who I talk to now. Focus a lot less energy than actual org design, study the different types and just pick one. And once you pick one, focus on the people, the culture, and how people work together”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All org charts suck. Like, there is no good org chart. Every single org chart has problems. So you can be organized around business units. You can be functionally organized. You can be organized around problems. And the reality is like every single one of those constructs sucks, right? There are pros and cons to each approach. If you organize yourself into business units, the problem you typically run into is silos. When people start basically advocating for their business unit with little regard for other business units, right? If you're functionally organized, sometimes you create too many dependencies across the organization and it becomes this like matrix way of working, which could be challenging. And as a result, could be slower to ship product, right? Those are just examples. These are not universal issues, but those are examples where regulators have very organized, there are going to be problems. So for me.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you look back to the first 10 employees, you realize that only two to three of those 10 first employees stayed with the company when the company reached a thousand people, right? And that's just so indicative of what will actually happen in practice. Like there are certain skills that you have that are good for In the specific domain for a period of time. And that time is not like universal forever, right? Like at some point, everybody taps out. And so it's just having that realization is tough. It's tough emotionally. It was like one of the hardest things for me as a leader. And I would say the way to break out of that is to ask for help and to try to learn as much as you can about the next role for you is going to look like. So that's one thing that I've learned. I would say another thing is that”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so for me, like one of the hardest things about building teams and going through hyper growth was the fact that you're going to lose a lot of friends on that journey. Like you just have to be prepared to say goodbye to your friends. Meaning when you start, you build really deep relationships with people. Like when you're a smaller startup, right? Like you typically have one-on-one interaction and you know everybody, right? And you have that connection with people. And the reality is Most people, if the company is truly going through hypergrowth, most people are not going to scale. It is very rare for somebody to scale with the company. And I mean, we actually, so at Index, we wrote a book, Scaling Through Chaos. And there's this crazy stat where basically when you look at many, many companies that reached a thousand people and were”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, you're going to probably hire fewer people that way, but you will hire the right people. So I think then you're going to actually have a team that you can rely on for years and years and years as things change.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not always. In the early days, I guess I had to learn this. But in the later days, I always set expectations about how we work. And so I think some leaders do this. It's like the anti-cell cell where I will share the worst day or what I think you will think as a candidate, what the worst day would be at Airbnb, and then still ask you if you want to join the team. And I would basically tell people, we're going to work day and night. We're going to work weekends. Direction is going to change. The strategy out the window every three months. The projects you're working on today, we're going to kill three weeks later. The roadmap that you are right now auditing as you're deciding your offer when you actually join after you took some break from your job is going to completely change. And so getting people, I think the common thread there is everything is changing all the time. You got to be cool with that if you want to join the scene. And totally fine. Like if that's not for you.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I find that those sprints were like designed this in 24 hours were Brought a lot of connection to the team actually. And they were like my most fun moments, actually, because you kind of like, you're forced to go a lot of constraints, all these like organizational dependencies disappear, all like the stuff that's kind of noise, and you can just start building, right? So for me, especially when you're not doing this by yourself and you're doing this with a team of people, it was deeply rewarding because you were all working together just like shooting the shit and like throwing a whole bunch of ideas out there, no idea was like too crazy, right? Now, it's not for everybody. And so I actually in the interview process when I would hire PMs, I was always”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's less about hitting the goal. I think a lot of people, when they see really big goals, they get, they immediately afraid of the goals because they think, oh my God, I don't know how to hit this. If we don't hit it, what happens? And you start thinking about all the downstream consequences. The reality is it's not about hitting the goal. It's about thinking how to hit the goal and going through the journey of that creative journey of like, what does the world need to look like for this to be true, this like crazy goal to be true? Like how should we think about it? And oftentimes it pushes you to test extremes, right? The whole world is going to operate this way or nobody in the world is going to operate this way versus like something in between. And usually it's when you start testing the extremes is you begin to like realize like, oh, you know, this is the path that we should actually take.”
2024-09-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source