YouSaid · the spoken record

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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“Think a bit more creatively than maybe we would have in the past. Now, that didn't always work because there were examples of this where you were just like, I don't know what the answer is. Like I need more time to design this and to think about this problem, right? There were definitely examples of that, but there were many examples where it was actually a great forcing function to go with your gut and actually innovate.”
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
“Mind blown, right? Like one how to the ripples that's going to send through the organization. Because I knew like all the people that were involved on building this and we had like this whole like neat flow. And we did design it actually in 24 hours. It took a little bit longer, but we designed it very quickly. And what I learned in that moment is that the chaos that was actually an example of chaos that he inserted into like this very calm building process. And that chaos forced us with that artificial time constraint to dial up our intuition and to”
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
“Pick a project that he thought was important. I think it was actually a host onboarding at the time. And of course in this project, we had like three or four, I remember we had this like perfectly crafted timeline. We're going to design this for the next four weeks. And then we're going to start building and we're going to deploy in certain pockets of users. We're going to learn. We're going to iterate, et cetera. Very like rational timeline, right? And he said, yeah. I don't care about any of that. We're going to design this in 24 hours. And I was just 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 just don't feel good. Like something just feels off right now. And I remember asking him, like, what do you mean? Like, our numbers are up into the right. We're shipping quickly. Everything's great. What do you mean? Like, what are you unhappy with? His response was things are just too calm. I don't like it. And I was like, okay, what do you mean? Like calm is great, right? Like I operate in calm. And he then.”
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, maybe the other thing I'll mention, and like as I reflect on setting priorities and just like working. I think a big lesson for me is that chaos is good. Chaos is actually great. And sometimes you want to create chaos in an organization to push the organization to think creatively and to actually like make leaps in product development. And so, I mean, I kind of, you know, as I reflect on my life, I like cleaning up messes. I like when things are very organized. I liked when there's just like very, there's a lot of clarity on how things are put together, right? And it's very, Chaos is scary, right? And I think that this is very natural for a lot of people for chaos to be scary. But I've seen examples when just a bit of chaos is so, so helpful. Just to give you an example, I remember me talking to Brian one day. And he was like, hey.”
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
“Everybody wants to find meaning in their work, and everybody typically wants to understand the reasons behind a decision. And it's important to share, to take like, I've done this myself where I just like make a decision and you like move on and you go on to the next decision. And it's actually so, so helpful if you take like 10% more energy and time to now bring everyone along around why a certain thing was decided because it's going to help them just themselves make better decisions because now they have a lot more context about how this decision was made and they can learn from that moment. So that's partly why it's important. I mean, for me, it didn't come naturally to me. I'm like a pretty, I don't know, I'm a deep introvert. Like I shy away from many different things and it had to be a learned 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
“Yeah, and this was actually a learning for me in an area where I would say I failed over time is just general communication to the broader organization. When you rise really quickly, you tend to underappreciate, or I did, just how important it is to communicate what as a leader you're spending your time on and the areas that you think are the highest priority right now. And so eventually I started doing a lot of all hands and I started sending like the weekly thoughts from Vlad or just like my random musings on what's in my head. And I realized that sharing that context with people is just so important. People actually want to hear from you. And it's good to overcommunicate and it can help people understand certain things about their day to 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
“That were important, but I led Burn for a while because I just had to spend my energy elsewhere, you know. And then, of course, I would to myself, I was thinking, like, are we doing too many things? Like, is this the right way to operate?”
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
“Sometimes you would have examples where certain products product launches didn't go well. And let's say it just, you know, you weren't seeing in the numbers, the users weren't happy. Like, okay, sometimes you just need more time to understand what's actually wrong. You don't need to like jump on it immediately, right? So that's maybe like one example of a fire that I led Burn quite a bit. And quite frankly, at some point, I had so many teams that I was working with that I just needed to prioritize even between the teens where like this team is the number one priority. And I know that I need to be in design reviews with this other team. I just can't because I have to be thoughtful about how I'm spending my time in this given moment. And so I actually have to deprioritize projects. And so there are certain projects.”
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
“Process burn, meaning like you will always, and this is what I felt during my 10 years at Airbnb, I always felt underwater and I always felt like we just needed to bring on more people who had experiences certain things that we were doing. And anytime I delayed or I was like not fully engaged with the hiring process, especially a very senior person, it just, it bit me for such a long time and it set the whole team back. And so those are the three things that I would never let burn. But you got to let a whole bunch of other stuff burn for sure.”
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 feel like that exists, like for example, if not everybody buys into Instant Book or there's just some disagreement about what supply should be on the platform, you've got to squash that immediately. You cannot let that fire burn because it can spread. I guess if I followed the analogy, like it could become a wildfire. And then suddenly you have a team of people who don't believe in what they're doing. They're losing meaning. They lose meaning in their work, right? Which is just really bad. You have to bring people together immediately when you feel like people, whether it's many or a few people, do not believe in the direction that the company's headed. You got to squash that immediately. Then the third one for me, and this was a bit painful to learn, but you never let a senior hire”
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
“Bad stuff's going to happen, right? So I have a few of those examples for me that I have, like over the years learned to not lead burn. First, timelines, major timelines. This is like huge product launches. Once timelines slip, you basically establish precedent that timelines are not as important and timelines can always slip. So you never want to set the precedent that a timeline slip. So that to me was when there was a major project and the timeline was significant slipping, I had never let that fire burn. I immediately jumped in. The second is when there is disagreement on a strategic decision or maybe even part of the vision.”
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
“Actual priorities and what can we let burn meaning do you actually have to expand and do more things or can we maybe reprioritize certain things and focus on fewer things and put a lot more energy behind? To have those conversations as a leader, you also have to recognize that people on your team are eventually in a really good position to gauge what fires should be burning and which you're not to be burning. Now, the one thing I'll say though is it could be dangerous. And there are some things that you should never let burn because if you let them burn for too long.”
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
“On the fires that we would let burn. And so then when my partner, my engineering counterpart or my design counterpart, would see a fire burning, they would know like, yep, we agreed that we're going to keep letting the fire burn for now. And it was just really important to be aligned as a team on that. Now, the other thing that I've learned is you got to let other people burn fires too. And it's very actually empowering. And oftentimes I remember especially when you're leading a very large organization. There could be teams and teams and many different leaders you're working with. Oftentimes people come to you and are basically like, we got to do this new thing to drive goal one. And I just don't have enough resources. And we need to hire more people and we need to like expand the resources of this team. My first question always was, well, what are 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 have a lot of strong opinions here with setting priorities. I would say the first one is, and this was my motto for the longest time and this still is, you got to let fires burn. And what that means is you can do it all, like you just need to let go of things that are not important. Because if you have 20 different things that you're equally engaged on, it just means you don't actually know what is most important. And so my motto has always been let fires burn. You got to be okay with some things not going well so that you can dedicate most of your energy on like the few things that actually matter and the things that are most important. And it's hard to do. It doesn't feel good. Again, many people, especially PMs are perfectionists. And so it just hurts when things aren't going well and you just got to learn how to let things go. What I always did was I kicked off every Monday with the leadership meeting where we would talk about our priorities for the week. We would not talk about longer-term priorities. It was literally 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 mean, I think there are people who find joy in solving hard problems. And the joy you get from working on the hard problem is fulfilling and you don't need to seek external validation for the things you do every single day, you know? So yeah, I love hiring people like 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, I mean, first of all, thank you for saying that. Some of those resonate for sure. I think the getting stuff done and being hyper-focused on the drop is Something that's really important. I mean, at index here, we also say keep the main thing, the main thing. And just like in investing, same thing in operating. You got to focus on the actual job versus like all the other things that you could potentially be doing. So to me, I remember when I was actually hiring product leaders and there's some product leaders would do lots of different engagements outside of the company, whether it's investing, advising, speaking, attending companies, all those things. And they were huge red flags to me because it was clear that this person, there was just something missing in their day-to-day. They didn't try to put all of them into the thing that they were doing. And so for me, like it's really important when I hired people to hire people who were incredibly mission driven and would dedicate every ounce of energy to keeping”
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
“What you can do with those drivers and how you translate those drivers to measurable results. There are people who spike on sales and who spike on just being able to package something in a way that other people cannot package, right? There are people who spike in process. Like there are people who will literally every day think about how to get people to work together really well. And that like they just know how to get to the essence of that, how to connect the dots between different teams working together. Some people are really great at product design. Like there are, I've seen quite a few founders actually who can tell you immediately about what kind of interface is going to resonate with people and what kind won't and why. So there's just some examples, but there are many dimensions here.”
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 there's the very natural spike sometimes is you get a domain expert. So there's a specific field, let's take marketplaces, and there is someone who just understands the mechanics of how things work. And just really spikes on understanding how you can take certain drivers.”
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
“Is this founder spike on, and how is that spike relevant to the problem that they're tackling today and how well does this founder hire to bring other spikes to the team? That's literally like what I think about these days.”
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 you basically develop, you try to develop just about every single thing so that you can be good at almost every single skill that exists, right? And I just think that's the wrong mindset. Instead, what I've learned over time is instead of trying to find people that are good at everything, you need to look for people who spite on specific things and then add them to a team with different spikes. So there's no single person that is like spikes on absolutely everything. That's very rare. But they spike on something that's very crucial to the team. And if you assemble different spikes on a given team, that team is going to do great things as long as everybody inquires and everybody starts asking questions, actually listens to other people versus just, you know, coming about that. So even now, like as an investor, when I look for, when I talk to founders, the first question, like in my head is 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 mean, I think Building teams. And realizing that Sometimes when you build a team, and this is actually often misunderstood. I think when people build teams, they try to make sure every person on the team is good at just about everything. Like you typically go through this process of like, here are my strengths, here are my development areas. And typically the development areas are”
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 you got to reinvent yourself. And that is very hard to do. So one thing that I've learned is like you got to ask for help. Like you can't take some village, right? You can't just get there by yourself. And that's actually something that Brian taught me where, I mean, this guy just grew every six months. It was a different person. And a lot of his secret sauce is not being afraid to ask people for help who were experts in the thing that you're trying to learn. I mean, my motto is like, ask for the impossible and sometimes you're going to be surprised. Like there are people out there that are experts on something who actually want to help 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
“There's a lot there, you know, it's not like it was smooth sailing for me every single year. Like I had plenty of challenges just personally, like going through that journey. Like you're not, you take a job and then you're sometimes just not prepared where it's going to take. And the reality is every three to six months, my job changed. So I would just get comfortable in the role I was in, let's say like in the very early days I was literally an icy growth PM with a tiny team, got pretty comfortable. And then like a year later, everything changed. And I was suddenly like leading a team of 20. Then a few years later, things changed again. I was leading a team of a couple hundred. Then a few years later, again, everything changed. And you just, everything that you take comfort in, in your current role breaks. The process breaks, how you hire brakes, how you spend your time breaks, the projects you work on, everything breaks.”
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 remember there was one person who I deeply wanted to hire who I thought was just phenomenal and would be such an amazing addition to the team. And I just, I tried and tried and tried for a very long time and I just failed. I just could not get that person to join. And at some point it became like counterproductive. And I had to let go and literally just like wrote like, okay, getting this person into the company. I'm like, this is not going to happen. I got to move on at this point. Just threw it 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
“Every media group always had a trash can. I would always like throw stuff into the trash can whenever I got like upset about something.”
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 need to let some things go and focus on the things that matter. And I actually remember even going into one of the ones with my direct where I would sometimes lead, like I could tell, you know, the PM is like a bit frustrated about how things are going. And my first questions would be, what are we throwing in the bucket? You know? It's actually like a very liberating thing that you can 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
“So, the shift bucket was a visual analogy where I would take a piece of paper and some of it actually wasn't as visual. It was like real. I would take a piece of paper. I would write down something that wasn't going well, perhaps a dependency, perhaps a project, perhaps a meeting that I was going to have that I knew it was going to be frustrated. Or maybe like we didn't even decide to go the way that I deeply felt passionate about, right? I would write it down. I would crumble the piece of paper and I would throw it in my like shit bucket, basically. And the rule was once I threw something in the shit bucket, I couldn't take anything out of the shit bucket. So I would not dwell on the things that I just needed to let go, you know? So this was a very powerful tool that I'm a perfectionist. Like I just deeply care about many different things and I have a hard time letting go. And so for me, it was just a reminder 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
“So the surrounding prayer goes something like this grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. So I actually, that Prayer was so powerful for me that I actually wrote it out on the piece of paper on post-it notes and I would read that thing like every other day. And it would help me just take a step back from the day to day and just like put into context what's actually important. And again, what is in my control today and the things that I can actually do. Highly recommend The other one, which you may remember, is the shit bucket.”
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
“Oftentimes, it's about also being able to be impactful at a company that is in hyperscale and is growing quickly. A lot of it is actually just psychological. So it's not like there are these like core skills that sure, like you got to have some baseline skills, right? But a lot of it is day to day regulating your mind. And it's so easy to get lost in the sea of projects, the sea of priorities, the sea of opinions. And like I said before, dwell on the dependencies, right? That exist between teams without actually asking yourself like what you can do in the moment to make an impact. And for me, like I've actually used two tools, which some of them you may remember, that have helped me. The first tool to write, this is again purely psychological to help my mind. It's the serenity prayer. So I...”
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
“Totally, totally. I think I remember doing a QA with the whole company on the InSumbook topic. This was a very long time ago, but I still remember where instead of, again, advocating for a point of view, I just asked all the people that were concerned, like what their main questions were. And then we just tackled them one by one and we would talk. And there's just something very disarming when you embrace the questions you embrace the negativity and you have an open mind that maybe there's some things that you missed and some things that you didn't consider.”
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
“Remember, like telling myself that I am here to surface and share information that will help the group make a decision. That's what gave me peace of mind to actually like poke the bear and be able to surface the things that I've seen. I mean, the other thing is when we were working on the Instant book change from request to book to instant book, right, for the entire marketplace. That was very challenging. And I remember getting up on stage in front of the entire company and explaining why like this is actually good for humanity, like literally those words. Many people disagreed. And it was not an easy thing to do, but had to be done.”
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 came at it from a very different perspective where I felt like that wasn't actually our mission from the very beginning. And although I understood that in the short term, the numbers probably would go up and you would choose growth. But at the same time, that wouldn't in the long run be a point of differentiation for us, right? And so I had a very different point of view. And it was very hard in that conversation. Everyone's excited. Everyone seems to be aligning around the point of view to be the voice that's like poking. And this is like, nope, let me share why I think maybe we should go in a different direction. And it's when I”
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, absolutely. I mean, I've poked the bear many times. And by the way, I've been humbled many times. It's not like I poked the bear and my like rightfully poked the bear. Sometimes I learn stuff and I realize I was wrong. A couple of examples that come to mind, like one, I remember having these debates with all like basically senior leaders at Airbnb just about every couple years actually around how much supply should we have on the platform and what kind of supply should be on the platform. And there was one school of thought where we needed basically that school of thought represented the view that we needed all supply out there to be on our platform regardless of it was a person hosting, it was a vacation rental, it was a hotel. We just needed all supply on the platform, 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
“Afraid of being the only one who disagrees or sounding stupid or things like that. And so I remember it was probably like 2014 or 2013 where I made a promise to myself, I'm going to always poke the bear no matter how hard things get. Because at the end of the day, like, what's the worst thing that's going to happen? Like, did I get fired? Like, why would I even be afraid of that? But if I do, like, I'll find another king, you know, life is short. And so. You've done this really well where I feel like you've also always, I remember when we were working at Insta book, you've definitely poked the bear where you were like, you guys are wrong. Like, this is how we have to approach it. And I've always really appreciated it.”
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
“Totally. Well, the other thing I would say is the other motto that has really helped me drive impact. And I used the analogy of the bear. And I've always told myself, don't be afraid to poke the bear. And what that means is don't self-censor. If you have a strong view after you've really grounded yourself in the truth and you feel like you've done your homework and you've asked all the questions, if you still disagree, if you still feel like we're going in the wrong direction, don't be afraid to poke the bear. No matter how hard things get. And that's a, it's interesting because I think a lot of, especially as an organization matures, you find yourself in meetings with many execs, founders, et cetera. It's often hard to voice your real opinion and usually like tone it down a little bit, right? Because you're”
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
“Totally, and lead with questions like basically approach every conversation with curiosity. Like try, like, don't come in because people usually like when they prepare for a meeting, I've seen many PMs do this and you prepare with like, here's my view. And here are the bullets that support my view. And that's the wrong way to approach it. I think what you want to go into a conversation, you start the conversation with questions, prepare the questions that come from a place of curiosity of the things that you want to know more about and you want to learn from the other perspective. Then check yourself to see if you still want to advocate for the same point of view or not.”
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
“Reflecting on what the other person is saying. And so that's been my Sometimes when I talk too much, I tell myself wait inquire, dial down, advocacy, just take a breath, take a moment, take a beat, and actually ask some questions and see why the other person feels so strongly.”
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
“For saying no, first, you can't just be dogmatic and just say no for the sake of saying no and just disagreeing with people. I don't know if you remember, we've talked about it in some context where basically a lot of people approach a conversation with the point of view and they begin advocating immediately, meaning we should do this or no, we should not do this, right? Me, I always took the opposite approach, and I still do. I inquire first. I dial up inquiry, I tone down my advocacy, meaning I'm going to respect the other opinion. I'm going to ask a ton of questions because I fundamentally believe maybe there's something I don't know and there's information that I need to understand to make a better decision. So in the beginning, dial up inquiry and then once the person that we're talking to feels heard and you actually have absorbed information and maybe you changed your mind. Maybe not though. That's when you begin to advocate. So oftentimes you just come into these conversations where everyone just advocates. Advocate, advocate, advocate. And you're talking past each other.”
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 so I think during the back of the envelope math and being really good at privatization is one thing, but also not getting distracted with all the noise and all the different opinions that everyone's going to have at a big company is another big 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
“Yeah, totally. The other thing I'll say is also equally important saying no to a lot of things. And it's actually really hard because, you know, we Basically trained and conditioned to say yes, right? Like you go to school, you follow the rules, like you listen to your parents, you don't want a disappointment people. And so when people ask for help, you help, right? And you want to be a really good teammate. But then at some point, you realize that's actually not the job. And if you were to say yes to absolutely everything that you have to do at a company, you would be distracted all the time with like tons of things that will not make impact, right? And so I learned very early on how to say no. And it was hard emotionally. Like I've gone through many different debates and conversations, but ultimately I think maybe it doesn't win you many friends in the short term. But in the long term, people realize that when you say no to something, there's probably a really good reason behind why that thing may not be as impactful today. And maybe we shouldn't even do it in the first place.”
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
“To help us understand the impact that something would have. And you needed to at least, now those assumptions could be completely crazy and could be very challenging, but you at least needed to think through the mechanics of what you have to believe in order for this project to be a success. And for it to then make a big dent and whatever you're trying to achieve at the company. So every single thing we did had that behind the scenes and we spent a lot of time on this to make sure that we were focused on the right things.”
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
“Can the other team do why so that I can do X? And I think that's a very dangerous place to be because at the end of the day, like you just need to let go of some of these dependencies, like you're not going to move mountains every single day and you got to focus on the things that are actually within your control. So again, it's more of a mindset shift. The other thing I would say is Every single project that we worked on an Airbnb, we did back of the envelope math with assumptions”
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 when a company matures, I think there is, you know, it grows many more people join the team. The company gets bigger. At some point, a lot of people are working on similar things. You then teams start to form. Then the entire department start to form pretty quickly, I think a lot of people begin to realize that you yourself are not in control of many things. And you actually depend on what other people do, right? And so a lot of people, and I've done this too, have focused a lot of energy day to day on the dependencies rather than the things that you yourself can do in your day to day. So for example, what I've seen as an organization scales, people transition from saying I can do X and they transition to saying”
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
“Understanding why certain behaviors exist on the product that you're working on, right? Can you influence that behavior? Like what if you do X, what will happen essentially? And I spend a lot of time actually blocking off like on my calendar, just time thinking through the drivers with the question of what are the drivers are going to have the most impact for the business. And I remember when we worked on InstantBook together, I think this was like back in probably like 2014, that was not a random project. There was so much thought behind Why should we focus on Instant Bug and what was the core problem with Airbnb at that moment in time and what impact with all we could have on the overall trajectory of the company? So that was impact, impact, impact always just my motto, I guess.”
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
“Fine, and somebody is like willing to give you a shot, you know, to build something crazy, and so for me, like I always thought about what is the hardest thing that I can work on and how can I drive the biggest amount of impact. Now, oftentimes it's, you know, figuring out the priorities is relatively easy. There's typically clarity around what you have to focus on, whether it's expanding a team and really building out a specific team, whether it's growth rate or focusing on the product quality or closing deals and closing sales. You can typically figure out what the priorities are. It's oftentimes very hard to figure out how to make impact. And like what impact even means. And so for me, my motto there was always just learn the drivers of the business. So like your day drop to the side for a second and just immerse yourself in the”
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
“Main mindset was impact above everything else. So like impact, impact, impact, impact. And that's the only thing that mattered. Like basically my entire career. And so I woke up every day and I asked myself two questions basically. Number one, what are the highest priorities for Airbnb today and over the next like three months? And then two, what can I do to actually make a meaningful dent in those priorities? Like what impact can I have? And I always made sure that whatever I worked on was very aligned with the top priority for the company. And I would say if you find yourself in a situation where you're not working on a top priority of the company, you should probably get a different job because at the end of the day, you're spending so much of yourself and so much time at your job. You might as well really go for it and work on the hardest thing you can.”
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, first, thank you for that introduction. I'm a work in progress. So there are many things that I am constantly working on. I think for me, like when I reflect on my journey at Airbnb, it was more about the mindset rather than any kind of like skill. So for example, my”
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 how much time do you have No, jokes aside. I've loved working with you, man. And I have to say, the one thing that I always deeply appreciated was that no matter how hard things were, you like always called out the elephant in the room. And so you always told me the stuff I did not want to hear. And, you know, large companies, things are growing. Lots of things are happening as a leader. You miss so many things. And so hearing actually what's happening and the reality of what you're dealing with. It was just so, so helpful. So I deeply appreciated that about 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
“Yeah, of course. Excited to be here. I mean, you were always a rock star. So you're a rock star back then, you're a rock star today. So excited, excited 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