#134: Why storytelling is still the most important skill for product leaders | Josh Elman (Partner @ a16z, ex-Apple, Robinhood, Twitter, LinkedIn)

And we are live Josh. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me so excited for this I Have been a I was telling you in the pre-recording just a big fan of your content for so many years And before I even had my first p.m. Roll I remember just like consuming your content being like this path looks so interesting. It sounds so interesting So being able to kind of now be where we are today and talking to you about how the the craft is Evolving is like a real honor. So thanks for making the time And where I want to start the conversation is something that you've been talking about recently, which is storytelling And specifically the importance of storytelling in the p.m function And maybe it's becoming more important than ever now, so I kind of want to start with Why out of all the things that you could potentially be like noticing or choosing to kind of talk about? Why did the storytelling? Part of the product management role stand out to you as a something that's kind of worth talking about a bit more publicly now You know when I think about product management, what is our responsibility always been is to help a team? Find the right product that users want and get it to them and a lot of the work historically was What can actually be done fit it in the schedule figure out how to take all the good ideas and pare them all down? But when I think about what really the art of product management is it's not that shaping and Jenga puzzle and fitting it's really seeing that vision that the whole team might see and crafting it into the story is what carries the team to go build the Right thing and being able to turn all of that inputs whether it's user feedback Whether it's great ideas from other people on the team into a cohesive story Thing that everybody looks at and goes if we can deliver that story for the world We're delivering something meaningful for our users for our product That's the most important role of product manager has to kind of carry this through You know the development and to actually deliver the right thing But having gotten to spend the last, you know, almost six years at Apple I learned that there's another really really important part of that which is not just the storytelling to get your team to do something But it's actually thinking about the story you need to tell your users and a lot of times in product management Historically, I think the product managers got very internally focused. We're like, oh, yeah some product marketing some Marketing team will go handle how we actually tell this to the world And I think when you actually realize that's actually the craft of product management, too That really changed my thinking to realize the story actually starts with what you tell your users And then it starts with if we want to tell our users and bring this to the world. How do we? Make sure that we have such a good story that drives us internally to build something great that we can tell the world So that was the first part of it There's one other big part though Which is AI is changing everything because now We used to have to tell the story to other humans and figure out how to get humans to build something now so much of our work is actually Using language to talk with AI to actually work through it and figure that out and that only elevates the art of writing Crafting telling a story, you know Your outputs only as good as your input and that's actually what makes this Input and this story and this ability to kind of see it all and put it together more important than ever That's so interesting. It's like the the the just a quick reaction to that third bullet point that mark I'm curious what you're gonna say, but like just like this idea of like The way you talk to AI and the way you get stuff out of AI being storytelling But there's this like obviously big moment We're talking about context engineering and making sure you have all the right context and in some sense that Like setting the stage for what you want some someone to do or an agent to do or an app to do is a Context setting exercise we could also call it storytelling. So I just want connected the dots there. Go ahead mark Yeah, I mean I'm curious when you say, you know, like it almost sounded like when you were talking about stories. It's almost like Three three audiences for that story, right? There's the internal team. So getting them excited and And getting them all like very aligned and clear and where we're going and I totally agree that that's like super important today's age Right, it was like, you know, if you go one degree off, you know, you can end up in a much You know different place like if everyone's running like one degree off You can end up in a very different place very quickly since like, you know building has been super fast Same with you know with and when you're doing a story for the customer, right? like there's just so much noise out there that like really good stories kind of it's like kind of like stand out and On top of like from from like the baseline of like AI slop and then the other one is like, okay cool now like these agents are becoming like a Almost a user of our products to write down. You have to think about like what so my question for you here was like Are these the same story or like it's kind of like the foundation of the story is the same But you're gonna have to craft them differently depending on on the audience. Like how do you think about that? I mean I think the art is the answer that is both because fundamentally it is the same story and it really starts with the story for your customer and and I think this is sort of one of the Even shifts that I had it at Apple was realizing how much that is true where it is Truly the story for the customer what's going on in their life? How is this product this thing you're working on gonna fit into their lives? And how are you gonna explain it to them that gets them? So excited where they have the aha moments that they can see why it's gonna fit into their lives And that's really the anchor the basis of all of it If you can't convince somebody in the world who has a busy life who's doing a lot of things to go Wow, if only I were able to change what I'm doing and adopt this product. My life will be better That's your goal. Like that's where it all has to work And so when you have that story for the user then internally you craft this to say Here are the things that are gonna matter to this user You need to do really good storytelling about who that person is or who those people are what's actually going on in their life this is the context setting that you're referring to Ben is is Laying all this groundwork for the types of people will be able to serve what's going on Their lives will actually do what the use you know We see these words like use cases But use cases get to be a list of like these fairly static things that kind of they get a little bit dehumanized It's so different when it's like here's what the person is doing and here's what they're gonna switch in their life to adopt your thing Instead of theirs Then you need to craft that for your team To make sure that they understand what the product is and what it needs to do and what it you know What features are there and you start to package up every feature in every piece that they tell a story? It's a little bit different than what you tell your users on the AI side, you know, it is this interesting thing We're all developing right now Which is what do you need to put into the AI to help it either code the right thing or? Validate the right thing or help you write a better document or you know If you're trying to create a presentation and you want to get some help from your AI How much of it can you give it all of this context so produces great work? Otherwise, it'll go to its priors and produce something that ends up more sloppy Yeah, I mean, I think I've been in environments. I know a lot of p.m. Find themselves in environments where almost like the the business story or the internal story is is where things start and then they kind of have to work backwards or try to find the customer story and I think it sounds like I'm Ben. Do you want to give an example like he's like maybe like increasing revenue or yeah Yeah we got to improve conversion somewhere or we have to like unlock a new vertical or we have to expand Tam or we have to Increase LTV, you know, like one of these kind of like business metrics business numbers and then and then that someone ends up being kind of like a DRI for like some initiative that moves that and then at some point the rubber meets the road which is like well What are we actually gonna like ship to do that? And then the product marketing like I've found some product marketing managers can be kind of frustrated because it's almost like all these decisions have already been made and then they have to just Figure out how do I tell that story? how do I almost like take this thing that doesn't actually have that compelling of a user story and like create a and it sounds like what you're describing is in cultures where Things start with the customer story and the customer outcome Not only I mean, we're not just gonna talk about how PMS might be more excited and maybe even more influential in those cultures But like the entire team probably has a lot more Motivation to do a really good job to to kind of like deliver something because there's like coherence at every level of analysis No, I mean, I think this is this is exactly the challenge is a lot of companies that starts with like let's move our LTV up or let's you know, reduce our CAC and Those aren't problems that you can just do with numbers I mean they aren't for a while and you can just turn knobs and a B test some stuff and Squeeze more out of it because you're like, oh you haven't tried this. We haven't tried this. We haven't tried this But the way to actually get the big unlocks is to think about like what's going on in your users lives What will actually make them stop what they're doing and pay attention to you for a moment and go? Whoa, this could actually make a difference or when they use your product and they don't have a great experience How could you have onboarded them better or when they use your product for a while? And then they kind of stop using it What has changed in their life where your product is no longer delivering the value that you think it should Like that's where you really get it unlock I always say if you have a conversion rate of like 22% on something great. That means there are 78 people who bailed for every hundred, you know every hundred who tried 78 bailed What's actually going on with those 78? Were they in line waiting for something and oh is their turn and they just forgot to finish You know where they like in the bathroom and then they got up and then like oh I'm done and I forgot to come back Were they really eager to do something and they got so confused they stopped and if you don't Understand what those stories are what those actual anecdotes are you'll never be able to create the big unlocks That'll move you forward So I have found that when people kind of start with the metrics versus start with the customers You don't end up getting to that deep customer understanding or if you do start with the metrics You have to just immediately turn it into what are we going to change in people's lives? What are we gonna actually make their lives better? And so that's the gap that we have to figure out how to go fill and sometimes It is a little bit of the story of the product a little bit better onboarding all of a sudden makes people go Oh, I didn't even know I could do that with it. Let me try that that becomes the thing that sticks Sometimes it's a little bit better marketing where you're planting a seed of what the product can do Instead of the marketing just being like click here free discount. It's you know Some actual value proposition that gets them so excited. They'll carry through and figure out how to get that value Sometimes it is a core problem in the product that has to be done but when you take the roles of sort of what is that customer story and you combine it with the responsibility of product management of Making sure we're building the right thing and getting it done. That actually is really transformative When Apple's famous for not having product managers or at least an army of product managers who are you know? managing each thing and feel like they're the owners of every little feature and every micro thing because it really puts the Technologists and designers who are making the things in that role of responsibility But it makes this product management product marketing role Incredibly important because it's keeping the whole story together making sure we're building the right things whenever there are heavy debates Bringing in that perspective of what customers want and what the story we can take to the world actually is and it really is transformative for for product development as opposed to Everybody feels like a little micro owner of something and get out of my way and it's my territory versus your territory You know the model I'm talking about without that like unlocks so much more creativity and also puts technologists and designers Into true ownership responsibilities what they do best, you know tech one of the things you were saying Ben was you know who actually figures out sort of where ideas come from and Technologists like can still have incredible ideas of here's what is possible Here's what we could do for the user and turning that into okay Well, what actually would the user want and how do we bridge those is kind of the art of This sort of combined storytelling, you know role and taking in all those great inputs designers are amazing and going Well, if we're trying to this thing Here's how this can actually work and bring the user through the journey best when product managers dictate too much of the shots They actually get in the way of letting that creativity bubble up and pull it together into a cohesive story Yeah yeah, for some reason the other thing that comes up to my to mine right now is the kind of the the way Amazon works to of like they they start with like the press release of like this story that they want to come out and they kind of work walk backwards from that and Like that that feels like like a very compelling way to work these days and yeah, especially I see it a lot too like I know consumer and b2b are a little bit different but like Like for beat like I think b2b needs storytelling more than ever like especially with AI like I feel like so many People are just building so many features. Oh this customer wants this thing. Let's build it Like, you know, like we don't really have to prioritize it anymore we can just get it done and I feel like it's just so easy to end up with like a confusing product and story of like what we're trying to solve and I'm packaging releases in a way that that makes sense for people and I'm kind of also to like bring that clarity to teams so and yeah, I I'm behind this thesis idea storytelling is super important is only gonna get more important. I'm curious It's funny though that you mentioned b2b. I've never actually worked on anything b2b The closest I got maybe was a little bit We were doing LinkedIn jobs and we were trying to help recruiters bring that in You know and start to figure out how to find people through LinkedIn, but this was like back in 2005 And so it's it's interesting that when you're thinking about consumers The one big difference between b2b and consumers is with consumers You're never trying to help them be more productive save time get something done It's really can I just help you get through your day a little bit better whether it's a moment of entertainment and levity Whether it's a moment of connection whether it is a moment of saving money or you know shopping or or being you know More efficient, but most of it is you know I'm trying to bring joy to customers whereas in the b2b world so much of it is like you have a utility function of Getting your work done and this either helps you lower your cost of getting your work done or helps you be more effective in getting Your work done. So it's it's definitely different type of story and way to you know tell things when the versus the utility function of like Joy and and getting you know having people get through their lives a little bit better And so it's been very interesting and the more I've talked to look somebody to be it's just like it's a different way of thinking I haven't seen that many product managers do a great job Switching back and forth. I'm super curious what you guys think I Mean as as a user the lines are getting very blurry for me. I don't like you know, I I'm using you know Like just to pick on grok bot. For example, it's definitely my favorite new tool last few months and I Don't know. Is it a consumer tool for me? Is it a b2b tool? I think I get a lot of work done in it But also like it's helping me with like fitness tracking and meal tracking and stuff nutrition like so I think as a as a user of these tools the lines getting blurrier and then you know, I also think that I think people's expectations for like what they get out of a of a b2b piece of software are becoming more like Intuitive consumer UX like and that's been a trend that's been going on for like a while now. So I think that that Yeah, I think people in the consumer world Maybe have a little bit more of a permission to kind of speak to the deeper human Kind of like motivations because it's like you could talk to it about your like if you're building something That's like a big market for consumers You could theoretically you should have a bunch of friends that you would potentially be able to serve your spouse and other stuff whereas like b2b It's almost like you you kind of like narrow into almost like this little like fictional world that your company operates in where you only Think about these very particular types of roles and like what motivates them and you kind of can sometimes forget their people too And so I would like to see the lines get blurrier and blurrier But yeah, Mark, I agree with you that like if you're trying to close enterprise deals and they're like I need these features It's very easy to have the whole culture kind of get designed around that whereas in the consumer world You know because the the LTV of a consumer and typical consumer businesses is like negligible and a lot of them are like ad based You're like, you know kind of like lower price point subscriptions And no single consumer tends to kind of sway the roadmap in the consumer world Whereas like in the b2b world obviously we see a lot of that. Yeah, I think what we're seeing too is that for maybe Kind of domains where like tools are getting starting to get a bit commoditized. So there is a lot of saturation I do think that some companies are starting to do something differently and maybe win in different ways are Maybe kind of leaning in and learning from what? You know consumer Companies are doing right like for example, like linear is a good example Like I don't think linear has features that Asana doesn't have or that Atlassian doesn't have right or Monday.com doesn't have but They people like it because it's like it's better designed, right? It's like makes you feel things that the other tools don't so I do think that like we're Gonna see more and more and like maybe it's like what people call like taste or judgment or just like just delightful to use So I think that's we're probably gonna see more of that in b2b as well No, I think you're totally right And I think this is the interesting thing is there's been a lot of bleed both ways Consumer is so innovative on design and ease of use and everything. We're seeing that come into enterprise I think your crock pot example is a great one with AI So much of the products over the past few years have actually gotten better and faster at option in enterprises because it's expensive Because you can then expense it and everything that you're like using these for work You're like, why can't I just also start to use them on our own lives? And I think we're gonna see a lot of you know Shifting back from that for these things that we've innovated on rock bots a good example town and Andreessen company You know is another good example of one that's you know I'm using it incredibly effectively for work and there's things that I'm like Oh, I could start using that for some of my home life stuff, too Although I like to keep them separate because I don't want my work context bleeding into my home context and vice versa Yeah, yeah Mark have you been using music? Yeah, I've been using music and mainly for but again like it's like when I think of meta I think of like super like, you know, like Personal consumer and like in a way like I like okay, like the moment I started using news I'm like, okay, this is for personal things because like yeah Instagram, etc But like it is very clear that They're not gonna stop there that it's like almost like a Trojan horse to them getting to companies and start building Maybe maybe because I was just listening to David Center's interview with Alexander Wang and they were kind of like deconstructing what they've basically been doing for the last like seven months leading up to this launch because we were all kind of like Seven months in AI time is a long time and we were all kind of like what the hell is Facebook? Like what's meta doing right now? Like they're falling behind and so they spent all this time Literally working workshopping the models to fit and I think they actually Josh. It's funny. You mentioned the use case thing because they created a Spreadsheet, I mean maybe it was oversimplifying in the story but it sounds like maybe like a couple hundred almost like use cases that they really felt like news should be able to crush and Then they said these benchmarks are how good it was at every point of the model development But then they put all of their, you know gunpowder behind Creating model a model that was designed specifically for these consumer use cases and making sure it was like the best You know Like none of the other labs as far as I know are designing their models for to actually work in one specific Product context because they have to serve like the API customers and stuff and they have to serve all these tools so I thought that was as far as I can tell that's the only story I've heard so far of A major frontier lab, let's say if we can count them as that now Designing their models to be used literally in a specific consumer application setting So mark, do they go into enterprise? Do they go into b2b or are they just literally gonna like do they have a mass? I mean, do they need more than a three and a half billion person TAM to go after? You know as far as like the consumer use case and if you think about the amount of context that you can gather Through these chats and then The amount of the amount of interest the interest graph that they have and like what people want and care about I mean talk about context So I think they are best positioned to win in the consumer space and but you think they're gonna get pulled into like it's almost Like no matter how they roll it. They're gonna get pulled into like having to serve that b2b use case. I Mean, I think I'm sure they're gonna consider it. Like it's just you know, it's Like the willingness to pay I would say it's much higher right and I think you know, I'm sure like while they've optimized for this consumer use cases, like I'm sure they can, you know, modify the the Their models for coding too, right? And I think that's like and I know people are using it for that. So and I think it's gonna be more of like a strategic decision, but I'm sure they're having conversations right like what do we do next? Josh, there is a story inside the company right that they have to like use to like to navigate this There's two stories there there's the story in the company But the most important story is for their customers when they're talking about Muse They are talking about the consumer values that you can get the consumer benefits You know what you call those that list of use cases needs to come translate into like have Muse help you plan your trip Have Muse help you sort out your busy schedule on Childcare pickup and sports schedules and club sports have Muse or you know Siri or anything else help you get through your day and figure out where you need to be at any one time or Who you need to follow up with, you know as friends or what time your you know, church celebration is And then have Muse help you sort out your Busy schedule on childcare pickup and sport schedules and club sports have Muse or friends or what time your, you know, church celebration is this weekend. Like those are all a very different use case set than when you're trying to tell stories about a product to customers. So if I were to start positioning a product that way, and then you go and you're like, Oh, but also now use me for coding and also now use me for other stuff, you're now, you know, kind of dissonant with your story. And so internally it is that same thing. It's like, which of these things do we want to be great at? And then what happens is people test the things you expect it to be great at. And they don't always test the other things. And, and you don't always know what everybody will do once you put a product in the world. But if then, if people say, Hey, you know, Muse is not the best at making a website for my small business, but it's amazing at helping me plan a trip. Is that a flaw of Muse or is that a, yeah, great. You tried to stretch it to something else, but the things that was designed for, and that was really trying to meet you where you are were these other things. That becomes the tension in the importance of a story because a story can't be everything to everyone or you're kind of stand for nothing. And so I think that's where this, the value of crafting that narrative from both what we tell to the world, how we position our products to what we tell ourselves inside, to how we test it, to what we actually aim for, um, creates a ton of, you know, focus. Yeah. And you can see it by the way, like the, like, I know you talked, Josh, a little bit about like the importance of like user onboarding and like that the empty like chat box is like one of the worst, like first experiences. Cause you're like, what the hell am I supposed to do here? Like, you know, I could do a million things. And one of the things that I thought was really cool about like Muse onboarding is that they have like almost like when, when you start connecting things, there's like this like idea tab that kind of like gives you like very contextual, like ideas to like what they see in your email and your calendar, GitHub. And, and, um, it's like a great way to be like, and you can just click on it and just like start doing it for you. And it just like, it keeps updating and depending on what you see. And I'm just like, Oh, like that's just such a smart, like not empty state, but like kind of like, yeah, like in between empty state and kind of like the first use case that I think is super, super smart. Empty states for these products right now is crazy. Like I'm a, I'm in a very lucky position where I'm trying a lot of things, even pre-launch things, and, you know, all of them are like, what do you want to do? What do you want to say? And, and funny enough, I remember at Twitter, this is gonna take you back to Twitter in 2010, but my, or 2009 when I joined my very first mini spec that I wrote for Twitter was we were actually going to change the prompt from what are you doing to what's happening? Because in 2009, Twitter started with the idea of what are you doing? And people would say like, I'm having breakfast, I'm doing this thing. And that was not what people were actually interested in. And people started doing much more talking about the world and the idea of asking people what's happening where they can type in what's happening felt so much more natural to the product and what the product had become, but to actually make this change, it sounds like a little like just go into the code and change a little one line or showed up and like, I had to find like the 25 places, help documents over here, et cetera. But, um, it was much more of a fundamental change. And that's part of the story that people interpret. If Twitter's asking me what's happening, Twitter's about what's happening instead of if it's asking people what they're doing, it's about what everybody's just doing in the moment. It's a very big shift. And so, you know, you take it all the way up to now where these boxes are like, what do you want to do? And I'm like, I don't know. I could do anything. What should I actually do? And, and the ideas tab is a great idea. Um, but we also just need to help people learn from what other people are doing. I would love to see things like here are 10 things that people just did that they are like raving about and none of the products right now have that in there. There's like no social proof. Nobody's worried because it might reveal personal information, but you can clean that out. Um, you know, I get this asked a lot. People are like, what do you actually do with Siri? And I'm like, you know, I show people a few things from, um, you know, I get a text of somebody with their email address and I just hold, hold down the button and say, Siri, add this to their contact. And it just fixes the contact right there, which is great. Cause with contact load, it's so hard to keep that all up to date. You know, I'll often just ask fun things just to show how the personal context works. Like what are some highlights from the last month that you want to relive? Um, and it actually does a really neat job. It can check your calendar and mail and photos and pulls in some really cool moments, you know, but teaching people how to do these things. If you don't build that into the product itself and everybody has to go learn on their own. And I think it's actually a failure of storytelling. It's a failure of us not making our products, bringing our users along on these stories and expecting it to just happen in the world. Yeah. I mean, I think you want to, yeah, go ahead, Mark. Yeah. The one example that I'm thinking of AI products are actually doing that really well of social proof is not to, you know, grow up, but like they have these concepts of templates and actually that's what sucked me into the product. I saw someone that I really respected be like, Hey, use my template for this thing. And then I used it and then it was just like, I could like get like, you know, like 80% there just by clicking on it. And, and it's actually become a really interesting like marketing engine for them. I know they reward, like they pay people a good amount, like if they drive traffic through their templates. So it's like, this is like really smart, like feedback loop almost, but Hey, like if you like, we'll reward you for, um, not just creating templates, but also like using your, um, audience to, to bring people into the product, which I think is like really smart. Yeah. Yeah, man. I think that's super cool. It still takes people to share them and do them versus the product. Also pulling people through that journey. You know, town is another one that, you know, when I got started on town, because it actually is to work with your team, the team actually share, you know, had a bunch of preset things. The team was actually already done and people on the team had actually built that makes it really easy to go start using those. And it makes me much more effective. You know, there's a couple daily emails or emails before every meeting that someone else had been like, this is really useful that made it so much, so much better than just a, what can I do for you moment? But so many of these other products, you know, even when I had the first time I tried Muse, I should have browsed the ideas tab more a little bit, but it's like, give me your email, give me all your stuff. And then I'll be able to suggest things for you. And you're like, can we just get to know each other a little bit first? Yeah. That is part of the story. Yeah. Yeah, no, I totally agree. That's actually something I feel, um, with a lot of these tools. Cause it's like, there's a big difference between actually the talk about user onboarding. Like when I was getting started with Grokbot because I know it's built by cursor and I'd been using cursor for gosh, like what, at least over a year, um, to do all, a lot of the work that I do with Mark on insider loops. Like, so I had connected, you know, like Stripe and post hog and our repo and like, it knew a bunch of stuff already had all that context. When I set up Grokbot, it was like, log in with your cursor account. And I'm like, cool. And then I was like, do you, I literally asked it, do you have access to the stuff I did in cursor? And it was like, I got access to all that stuff. And I'm like, amazing. So like the ability to kind of, you know, get started faster, the trust barrier with the tool. And it's even the same subscription. I don't even pay for Grokbot cause it's already included in my cursor pro subscription. Like, so the ability to kind of reduce the friction to getting to some kind of aha moment. And I did get there quite fast with, um, with Grokbot and to, to be, to be fair, I completely skipped the entire open claw craze and instinct craze and not saying they're not great products or Hermes. Um, but I just like never felt drawn into the product. Like I never felt them pull me. And then Grokbot came out and I'm like, Hmm, this one's like calling my name. There's something here that I want to like explore. And then it's, it's felt like exactly like what, what I want that kind of product to do for me. And you were fortunate to be using cursor, an incredible product, um, and had so much your life already there that this was like a natural extension. For most people, that's not the case. And so for most people, they need to get to know Grokbot and get to know it in a way that they didn't already have all this history. And so that's where the job of like taking people like you who've already set all this stuff up and they're running a bunch of their lives and are now having this great experience. How do you help others speed up their own journey? What is it that you can share? Hey, you know, you should go get Ben's, if I'm signing up and it's like, are you a developer? You should go get Ben's templates. Cause he's got this whole thing set up and uses all the time. You know, are you trying to do, you know, something, Oh my, you type in something and you're like, you know what, Mark has actually done this before. Here are amazing things he set up. Would you like to use his templates? Like, that's an amazing way to do it. And right now each of these tools is like, I got you. And you don't actually know if you're doing the best. The other funny thing is, you know, we're all very nervous when we're using these tools for the first time. I certainly am. And it's like, I'm actually doing it right. Am I getting good value? You know, I heard about crazy prompt engineers get so much more value than I do. And I know I'm not one. Um, how do we help everybody get that confidence? And sometimes it is like, I'm going to help you do this as well as Ben, because he's an expert and here's the kind of prompts he use and takes your little question and enhance it this way. And if I get these two extra pieces of context on you, then I'm going to be able to do it even better. Now the product is part of the story too. The product is bringing me along, helping me become an expert. That is what people want. And so many people don't build their products this way. They're just like, Oh, you asked for this. I'll give you what you want and I'll do my best. And then it leaves me as a, as a user going, could I have done better? Maybe it's not, maybe this product isn't that good. Maybe it's me. Yeah. No one wants to feel, no one wants to feel like they're stupid when they're using a product. I think, I think it's important to basically, you have a little moment to like hook someone into the product. And I think that's, that's really critical. I actually, so I want to, I want to get your thoughts on something. So like, I think we've established that like storytelling is super important. There's the internal storytelling within a team. There's a storytelling to your customers. There's kind of like the storytelling as you work with these different AI products to kind of get the best outputs. Josh, I'd love to get a, to get your thoughts on like, what have you learned about how kind of like learnable the skill of, of storytelling is? And then if you're willing to kind of riff also, like, I'm curious how you evaluate, like when people, like how can you assess, like, I guess, whether someone could be a product leader or PM or a founder that maybe you're talking to, like what stands out to you about like the components almost of like great storytelling there? I mean, one thing that could be helpful is like starting by like maybe defining like the anatomy of a good story, because I think like we've been talking about story a little bit in the abstract, but I think it might just be helpful to like break down as like, Hey, here's what actually a story is and like the different parts of it. Yeah. Look, I mean, I think being able to tell a great story about a product starts again with who the people you're trying to tell the story to, and then once you understand who that is, are you actually able to put in a way of like, here is this product and here's what it can do for your life. And that comes down to having real specific examples of things that it can actually do. And those examples have to be the very best ones that do two things. One is make you go, I would use it for that. And, and then spark creativity. Oh my gosh. If I could use it for that, I bet you, I could also use it for this, this or this. And I'll take a product that seems very obvious in retrospect, but like FaceTime is like a great product that connects people and families. And when it was first, you know, getting marketed a lot, you know, they would often show that call with like, you know, a grandma or a long, you know, a relative because you weren't always able to have that connection and it was taking the most intimate connection and making that something that you could actually do and see, and you'd be like, oh my gosh, I can call anybody now, long lost friends, other people, but one of the interesting things about that story is it doesn't make you think, now let me just use FaceTime for business. I got an important work call, you know, and it wasn't until some combination of, you know, Zoom and COVID that it like normalized doing that for work calls, which is a really interesting thing because, because that story shapes, you know, your narrative and the types of use cases and sparks those things. But it also narrows you into some domains and you have to make sure those things can be universalized. So the key to any good story is, you know, having a pithy way to describe your product, here's this thing it can do for you, give me very specific examples of how it can be meaningful in my life and kind of wrap it up with a, you know, and here's how you get started because I think getting started is very important. Um, once you have a good story for your product, getting everyone internally to kind of go, okay, so in order to deliver on this, here are the things we need to do. Here's the features it has to have. Here's the speed it has to work at. Um, and the other piece is I mentioned, get started is the last piece. People usually undersell onboarding and think they can just slap it on at the end. That's your moment. This is the moment that people go from like, I kind of want to try this product to, oh my gosh, I'm going to use it in my life. And if you don't invest as much time in that journey as you do in the making the product grade itself, you're totally missing out. This is, you know, an Apple to come back to again, you know, starts from the packaging and the unboxing moment all the way through getting that thing in your life. There's so many ways that you have to do it to get to them, these products that we use every day. I want to take a moment before we get back to the episode to tell you about Insider Loops. This is a company that Mark and I started because we just believe this should exist. Companies should be offering candidates the best possible preparation for their loops. Yet what they give them is vague and often not very actionable. So we took the matter into our own hands. We've put together well-researched and continuously updated guides for PMs interviewing at companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Stripe, DoorDash, and more. If you're getting ready for PM interviews at those companies, go over to insiderloops.com and learn more. It's a lonely time to be a product leader. The role keeps changing. There's AI hype everywhere and people look to you for answers. And that's why I created Supra, an invite-only community for senior product leaders and the partner of this podcast. And fun fact, I met Ben when he joined Supra. When you join, we match you with seven peers at your level and company stage. You can be honest about the problems you're facing and learn from people who've handled similar challenges in a fully confidential space that can help you get to a solution much faster. Learn more at joinsupra.com. Now, back to the episode. You know, I'm torn on that. Like, I definitely agree with you that the onboarding is important, but, you know, I have a three and a half year old daughter, almost four, and like watching how, you know, how intuitively she's learned how to use an iPad, for example, right, it's kind of caused me to like question some of what I thought was important about onboarding. Sometimes a product can be so intuitive, right, where you can just give it to someone and with not even knowing how to read, they can kind of like figure out how to use it to get what they want. And so do you still think it's like, I mean, I think the answer is yes, but I don't want to assume, like you think it's important to build the products in a way that's like so intuitive, you don't necessarily need an onboarding to kind of start to use it, or does it just really depend on the product? Like some products just have a ceiling on how intuitive they can be and how much they can help someone without kind of embedding some really thoughtful onboarding. I'm a big believer that the best onboarding doesn't feel like onboarding, but it feels like this progressive relationship of using the product, of actually getting to know the product. You worked at Life360, I think, right? Yeah. Life360 actually has great onboarding, but it takes some setup. You need to get your family on, you need to give it your location, you need to kind of define exactly what you're going to be using it for and who you want to keep track of. But once you do, it's pretty intuitive to actually use, but that onboarding journey is important. So, you know, I think your daughter with the iPad, she can certainly, you know, push buttons and have fun with it. And it's incredibly intuitive for that. But if you actually ask her, what are you trying to do? Or what do you think the iPad is? She's, you know, she's young enough, she probably doesn't have a good articulation of that thing she's trying to accomplish. She just wants to watch some like movie on Disney Plus or something, right? But the idea that I can give that to her on an airplane, for example, and I watch her like X out of the current movie and scroll the list of movies and find another movie that she's, you know, she, she knows and be able to click play. And I've even, she's even learned how to use like the fast forward scroll bar at the bottom like that. I was like, how does she, how does she understand this? She probably had the best onboarding ever, which was watching dad. And so watching somebody else use a product is still one of the very best ways to onboard. I would like to say, if you're a founder, you're a product manager, building a product, the best onboarding would be you standing over their shoulder. Going, no, no, do this. No, wait, wait, try this. Oh, oh, you're confused about that. Well, it's just this. And that's all, that's all you have to do. And that person over your shoulder can kind of explain everything. But in most cases, um, you haven't had that time and learning from somebody else. And so you have to build into the onboarding, that person over your shoulder, that's explaining things and doing it step-by-step and, and asking for steps and, and it really is a story that my favorite thing after pushing somebody through an onboarding is to ask him, what do you think the product does? And after going through onboarding, they should have the best articulation of what the product does. And if you get to the end of onboarding and they're like, I don't really know, but I can go play with it more. You've actually lost that moment because you haven't brought them through that journey. Yeah, that's a great point. Wait, so, okay. So going to this, uh, so if we talk about the story, um, and again, sometimes I like to talk about the story is almost like the, the hero's journey and the user is the hero, so it's kind of like, where did they start? What is the status quo? What is the challenges that they're facing? How do you help them get through that adversity and ultimately emerge kind of like stronger, victorious or whatever on the other side? And that's a good, that's generally a nice kind of like story. It's a generally good arc. And a lot of our products bring somebody to some new heroic moment in their life. That's what we want to try to do. Empower people. Totally. Is that the same as the vision? Is that, is that like the vision of what the product could do? Or is that different? Like, I mean, I tend to think the vision statement is always a little bit bigger than that. It's kind of like the impact you want to have on the world. You know, we're going to make, you know, um, you know, Shopify is like, we're going to make people around the world, entrepreneurs, you know, Apple's just create great technology that empowers people in their daily lives, like 360, keep families together, safer, more connected. You know, I might've not quite gotten the right vision for each of those, but like that mission or vision I think is really important, but I think for the product, it's, it's, what is that thing that this person will be able to do that they weren't doing before? And why will they like it so much? They're going to keep doing it now for hopefully a very, very, very, very long time. Yeah. Life through 60, we found, um, cause there's the famous story about Facebook. What is it? Like us 10 friends in seven days or seven friends in 10 days. I forget what that. Maybe, maybe, maybe, you know, but at life through 60, when I joined, we hadn't yet known this, but while I was there, we discovered that, um, the people that retained really well as customers and ultimately like, um, or like the best kind of customers were, uh, if you could get, if you could connect with, uh, one other person, at least in a circle where both people are sharing location and. Set up, um, specifically two places and a place is like a little geofence on a map. Yeah. Um, with alerts set on that was going to be kind of like the truly, like once you get someone to that moment, they're going to start to get the notifications that someone left home or arrived at school or like those kinds of things. And those are, those moments are going to make someone really stick around. And I think that was a really big moment for the company to understand. And we ended up kind of discovering that the, like the reason life through 60 exists is peace of mind for families. That was kind of ultimately the story. Um, and then, but actually I'll, I'll, I'll poke at that for one second. I think it's a great way to describe it. You described the technical details of, you know, two locations, two people sharing location, but the real thing is. You're set up to where it's actually delivering you the value of the product. You know, like 360 is where you're connected with your family and you're knowing where each other are so that you're all safe. And so when you go through the onboarding and the onboarding, there is a multiple person onboarding, you're not actually onboarded until you've got the other people onboarded too. Then you know that you actually have people using the product for what it's for. And we often get so that even the seven friends in, in 10 days metric, like gets you so focused on the metric where it's the it's what is that story behind it? It's I'm now set up connected to enough people in my lives that when I go to Facebook, it's going to have interesting things about what's going on in the world of the people that I care about. Like that is the goal. And you always, I find too few conversations map back to that bigger story. Totally. Yeah. One of the most interesting things to me about life through 60 was how, because it's, you know, family can be defined as, you know, spouse, like my wife and I are in a, in a circle, our daughter's too young to have a smartphone, but a lot of life through 60s users are, you know, parents with teenagers or something or kids. And so what was really interesting for me is like, there was often this, there was a group of kids that were like, very resistant to using a product like that. So it's almost like, why are you trying to track me? And the story for us, because we, we, we saw these other families that kind of overcame that. So it's not like we knew the answer up front, but we discovered it. You overcame the objection. Yeah. That the families that overcame the objection was, Oh, it turns out that the, the teenagers who are willing to make that trade-off can stay out later. They have later curfews. Their parents get. They have later curfews, their parents give them more rope to go do stuff because they're able to like get the peace of mind and knowing where they are versus and not have to hammer them all the time with where are you. And so once we learn that story, we can then use that to objection handle with the families that had the resistance. And that's the power of a good story is like, you know, it's kind of everyone relates to being a teenager that wants more freedom. Yeah. Right. I love that we just got to objection handling too. That is actually one of the most important points of telling that story and doing the work and onboarding is you have to figure out what that other story is in people's heads. In this case, that story was, I'm being invited to be tracked. And like, that's the immediate story. And so you now have once you understand that's the story in your users heads, you have to completely overcome that with a new narrative, a product that actually delivers on that as they go through the steps, the product convinces them of the actual story that's going to get behind it, which is like, Hey, by giving up a little bit of stuff, you'll actually now no longer get the pings. Where are you? Why are you not here? You know, what is going on that like agitate you and, and it's really stop getting those start just using this product. You'll have more freedom, flexibility, et cetera. And so that becomes the really important value. So it sounds like almost like for a good story, you should think like upfront, like what are some objections that our users should have? And then address them, you know, practically be like, Hey, like, you know, you might be concerned about this or just like, or is it also like about the art of like, kind of knowing when that objection will pop up and then kind of have an answer and be like, Hey, like, I know you might be thinking about this, but you know, this is like the way we think about it or, you know, I'm sure it's probably, it depends on the situation, but I'm curious, like, what do you've learned from like, introducing objections in this story? Well, I mean, I think the first thing you have to do is deeply understand them and then you have to design your product to get ahead of them because once you let people get into the negative headspace about something that makes them feel uncomfortable or nervous, you are immediately now on your back foot and the product has to convince them otherwise. But if you get ahead of them and you make it a conversation, you're like, look, you know, how do you help even the mom invite the kid? Hey, this is a great product. That's going to have me stop nagging you. And we're talking about, again, about Life360. If it starts there, then it's like, wait, stop nagging me. Okay, I'm curious now. And then the product has to pull you in. But if you don't design those and think about both the story you want to tell and the story in your user's head, you'll never land on a place where the product and the narrative pulls you through. Another example you've shared, Josh, that I love is the Robinhood social security number step because, you know, a lot of people are super scared of giving social security number, but I think, you know, not to put words in your mouth, but I think it was basically you guys discovered that there's a way to kind of turn the scary social security step into more of like, there's all these amazing things we can do for you once, but we care a lot about security. We care a lot about, like, we take all this stuff super seriously, so we need this to do things the right way or something like that. Yeah. I mean, we used to have a conversation, you know, when you talk about metrics versus story. Well, hey, that's the biggest drop off in the user flow, you know, in the onboarding flow is when people are asked to put in their social security number. Like, why is that? Maybe we should move it later. Maybe we can get it later. And by the way, it is true that that is one of the biggest drop off points, but it's also an important point that is like, this is serious, this is actually real money, it's actually real money with potential tax gain or loss implications. And if you want to be here and have a great account and have a great experience and get all the value this product can do, this is the trade you have to make. And we keep it incredibly secure, you know, we make it incredibly important. So I never looked at that as the, you know, a thing that should be easier or optimized away. I looked at it as like, that is the wall. When you cross over that, my ability to now convert you into funding your account and getting actually started in Sirius should be much higher. And if you were just trying to use the product and you're like, I'm not ready, then you're somebody who's telling us you're not ready at this moment to be Sirius. Come back when you are. And again, that's a very different way of thinking about it versus a metric obstacle wall. Totally. I mean, when I think about relationships and trust, right, like I feel like I'm way more likely to trust people that kind of flag the objections up front. Like in an interview, you'd be like, hey, here are all the reasons why you shouldn't hire me. Right. Or here are all kind of like my weaknesses up front. Right. And if you're okay with that, then it's going to work out. If not, like it's not. Or when companies do that, right? They're transparent about the challenges that they have as a business, as a team, or when they like flag risks up front. Right. Like, I think there's an art of like how you do that. But like, I think it's like, okay, like I think this like, yeah, like that transparency and openness by default makes me think like, hey, the way you're interacting here is thoughtful and there's not going to be surprises that I don't like along the way. I mean, building trust is all about being vulnerable and, and meeting people where they are and building that. And it happens in any relationship between two people, you know, and it's trading a little bit of secrets and, and, and all of that. And it turns out the way that we think about most of our products is building the same trust and relationship the same way. And I'm not sure that all products are designed with that in mind, but I think that's sort of the most fundamental thing is that's the relationship that we form with it. And I mean, AI is taking this to the extreme because we're communicating with it so naturally that we're sometimes over anthropomorphizing it, you know, as people, but it is all about building that trust and, and, you know, building that relationship. Yes. Speaking of that, one thing I definitely want to make sure we, we, we talk about before we run, we, we start wrapping up because this is flying by is, so coming back to the assess, like assessing, assessing, like this is obviously something where I'm very biased, but like I'm very interested in like interviews and stuff right now. When you think about how you've assessed or like your philosophy around assessing storytelling and someone you're considering hiring on a team, like how, how can you like put your finger on whether someone is good at this or, or, yeah. I mean, it's a great question. And my first question in any product manager interview, I always used to think was a total is I will say, Hey, tell me about the product that you worked on that you're most proud of. And I want to understand kind of the journey you went through and the impact that it had, you know, on the company, on customers, on, you know, everything else. What I'm really looking for is someone's ability to tell me a story of something that I'm hoping is their most proud moment of their career so far and is a project that they had to dig into that was hard, that was that, you know, had a journey where they had to convince executives to do something or were getting very hard input, or they learned something hard from customers or in their testing that didn't work and what they overcame. And then when they actually, you know, and I'm kind of looking for people who've like shipped something and then they can talk about the impact that it had on their customers. And I am so surprised. I think people sometimes get wrapped up in the word proud of, and they're like, Oh, I'm really proud because I got this promotion for this thing, or I did a really good internal thing. And, and they end up telling me kind of a weak story instead of giving me that journey where, you know, you want to put them as a little bit of the hero, but, and then, and I want them to tell me about this thing that like, we've all worked on at least one thing in our career that we are like even more proud of than the others. And I'm looking for that. And the ones who can go, Oh, well, gosh, this one time we had this hard feature and it was a really challenging thing. And we had to, you know, started here and we had to try to get out by this date. We had to make a bunch of these trade-offs and here's how I helped the team actually figure things out. And when we brought it to the market, here was the impact. I'm like, that was a great answer. And so many people just totally flubbed this with either something that, that was a very internal project or something that they didn't actually have that much of a role of, but they think it'll be cool because they were kind of attached to, or they can't really place themselves in the moments of, of transformation. And I'm always very surprised because that's sort of my layup question. And then everything else is like, what would you do here in a lot of case scenarios and tell me something where, you know, you got a hard no and how'd you overcome that in a company? You know, and I look for a lot of behavioral signals, but that one first question is usually my layup. And I'm already like, Oh, you haven't actually found a good story of a product that you're proud of. Um, that, that I kind of, you know, am quickly realizing they might not be that type of product manager. Hmm. So it sounds like the, like a lot of the failure state on, on answering that question or the most common, like maybe, um, yeah, like misstep is maybe getting too matter-of-factual like, Hey, like I shipped this thing that moved, um, you know, conversion by 18% and that got me promoted from senior PM to group PM. And I'm so proud of that. Yeah. You're like, Oh, cool. That that's cool. But like, um, yeah. Like why? Yeah. You want to understand more of like kind of the origin story, like, Hey, like what, what insight and like, like which customer are you talking to? Like, how did you realize this is worth solving? Like what, what stories did you consider and like kind of what did you learn and what was challenging along the way? Like what's the drama in the story and what did you learn from it? How did you get better from that experience? Like, I mean, that, that is the hero's journey. It always has to start to finish in a place that's like some like kind of recognizable to the starting point, but better in some way. Right. And so I think being able to kind of, yeah. And what you're looking for when you're hiring product managers is you're looking for people who can come into a new company and take a team on that journey and be part of that journey. And you know, and, and because a product manager isn't writing the code, isn't doing the design might be doing, you know, should be doing AI prototypes and everything now, like, but you're not looking for them to, to do the specific, you know, tasks of delivery. You're looking for them to be the navigator on that journey. They should be able to have a great story of how you could, how they've navigated journey of the past. And I would ask every product manager that I'm meeting or getting to know to just think about that and form at least one story of something they're super proud of. Like mine is still helping Twitter, helping us revamp the Twitter entire onboarding and growth experience. Like I'm so proud of the work that we got to do to kind of help a lot more people get on Twitter from the time that I was there. And like, that's still one of my favorite moments of my career. I've gotten a lot of other things. I can tell a lot of other stories now, but that's like the one that, that I always jumped to and I look for everybody, you know, when you've, you know, even gotten to ship one thing to the world with your team, like you should have a great story about that and the journey and the impact it had. And I would say, and if it didn't have a great impact, that's okay too, if you're proud of it, but now you have to explain why. Yeah. It's also, I think when answering that question, I think something that's like really useful in my head is like almost thinking like, who is the user of that story in a way? And like, what should I give that user? Right. In that sense, the user or the audience is the hiring manager, right? And like, kind of, and what is their, like, what are they trying to learn? Right. I'm like, trying to learn more about who this person is. Like, what do they care about? Like, what does like impact look like for them? And maybe like, like, what is your style of product manager? Like, like, kind of like what, like, how do you make decisions? And like, how do you, when you, when you have crossroads, like, how do you, like, are you more leaning into data? Are you leaning more into like quality of data? And I think also understanding like the culture of the company, like what do they value and how can I show that I align with those values? Right. And I do think like, you should always be honest and transparent, authentic, because otherwise you're just going to like, you know, wake up in six months and be like, oh shit, like, you know, I'm not a fit here. And I hate the way they work. Yeah. But I think thinking about that is the same thing with like another question that I always thought it was kind of a layout, but like I see so many people struggle with is like, tell me about yourself. Like, oh yeah, that's even harder. Yeah. How much time do you have? Right. I think, but I, I agree. I mean, I think the reason I liked that, what you're proud of story is, is, is because it kind of gives you, yeah. I mean, if we unpack the signals it generates is like, it tells you how someone thinks about setting the context for something that, again, if it's the story you're most proud of, there's got to be some background here. You can't just like jump right into the thing. So context setting and background setting. And then the, I say just like coherence. So like my ability to just follow the story is actually a bar that is not that easily met from, you know, having done a bunch of this stuff. So like having a coherent story that just like makes sense. Like it's actually quite, it's not that easy to, to, to, to do that in a short timeframe. And then I think one of the things I really love is almost like defining, like, are we on the same page about what like impact looks like? Right. So like what, what, what, what is like, yeah, the promotion. That's not, that's not to that example. That's not impact in like the world. So are you the kind of person whose North Star metric is like promotions, right? And like, or are you the kind of person whose North Star metric is number of lives impacted or, you know, something I, I used to, when I was interviewing for PM stories, I used to tell a story about building Breathe. This, this app before Apple launched, a year before Apple launched their own Breathe app for the Apple watch, I launched my own iOS app called Breathe that reminded people to breathe throughout the day. And I remember getting that first year, some emails from Pete, from our users that were telling me that they heard about, they discovered Breathe in the chemo ward while they're getting chemo with other people. And, and I remember, and, and, you know, even though we only had like, whatever, 65,000 lifetime downloads and we, it was like not a business and we shut it down after five years, like that's still in a way, like one of the things I'm most proud of having built something that could be kind of like used and even creating a little bit of camaraderie amongst people in this like super challenging moment in their life, like obviously going through chemo. So I think, you know, and so what does that demonstrate? Like when you tell a story like that demonstrates, like, I think about human, like deep human impact, like what it, what it does for someone in like those kinds of moments is what I'm oriented towards, right? Yeah. If your business and your company that I'm interviewing at is oriented towards other things, like, you know, maybe it's not a great fit, but if it does actually care a lot about people and that kind of stuff, like we're oriented in the same direction. I mean, if you're working on anything for consumer, I hope you care a lot about impacting people in their lives. But a story like that of, you know, I know it wasn't massive and impacted millions of lives, but it impacted a number of people so deeply in their lives. And I want to find opportunities to do that at more and more scale. That would be like a home run grand slam answer for, for me. And then it gets me into the rest of the conversation where it's like, okay, now that I know you've been on some journeys and you'd be excited and could be a real important part of our journey, now we get into more tactical product management questions and scenarios and behavioral things to get to know the person better. But I always figured, I always am surprised. We're like, I want you to have something they're super proud of and should be able to tell a great story about it. And you can then start to really tell the ones who, who are good at storytelling because they're able to pull things out of their life and actually do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm honestly surprised. Like, I mean, I've seen a bunch of like rubrics for, um, like hiring committees or even like, you know, like the career ladders of PM orgs. And I'm surprised that storytelling is not like a bigger line there. I think a lot of times it gets blurred into communication. Yeah. But I think it's just like such a, almost like big and expansive. At Facebook, I felt like it got kind of swallowed a little bit into almost like strategy like strategic influence. Because theoretically, like the way you influence people within an org like Facebook is by having basically like the big, the bigger story or like the better story that their story like gets swallowed up into. And then they start to invest towards your story. But I agree with you. It wasn't like explicitly laid out and storytelling. Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious if it should be, but that. I don't know. Career ladders are a whole topic. It's like. Yeah. I think at the end of the day, storytelling is a really important skill to be able to help advance things in the company and to be able to help advance things to your users. It might not be the most measurable, you know, definable thing. So I can understand why it gets wrapped up into broader communication and strategic influence. But at the end of the day, we all know, like the people who are incredible storytellers, you know, both as founders, both, you know, as, as leaders, as product managers, as engineers, those are the ones who really help us envision this future and then go build it. Like, that's what I love. Yeah. Mark, I'm thinking back to our episode with Sachin Rekhi about how he kind of like got everyone within LinkedIn to fund like LinkedIn navigator as like a, I'm sorry, sales navigator as like a, as a new business. And like, that was all, that was like a masterclass in storytelling. We'll link to that in the episode, but like, that was so good. Yeah. I'm curious, like, you know, there's probably gonna be people who are listening to this who are like, oh man, like I really need to up my game for storytelling. And like, if you're going to put someone on a storytelling bootcamp, like what are the things that you would have them do to get better? I do a couple of things. I would watch Apple keynotes, especially going back to the Steve Jobs era. I think those are the masterclass in storytelling. I got my own masterclass getting to have worked at Apple and having to refine stories. The one thing that I learned more than anything is the best stories don't just come out the first time they come out from reps and you do it over and over and you find what doesn't quite work and what doesn't quite land and what examples aren't quite the most magical and you keep going until you do. And the difference of stopping when you're good enough versus continuing to do reps until you're there is great. And so watching some of the best ones and the other one is just practice. Practice on yourself, practice writing it down, practice telling it to AI now, get feedback from AI. You can just ramble into an AI and have it actually critique your story and help you refine that ability to tell stories. It's great. And then I like to say, read a lot of fiction. I actually think a lot of people read a lot of nonfiction. You know, we read a lot of tweets and blog posts and everything else, but I think reading fiction takes you on journeys that are so much richer and that remind you that like those are the journeys of imagination. And when we're building new products, we're imagining a new world and being able to go on the journey of that new world teaches you how to bring more people on it. So I mostly read fiction personally. Same. Anything fun you're reading right now, Josh, before we start wrapping? You know, Friend Turned Me On to Dungeon Crawler Carl. And if you've ever read this series, it's sort of a world that takes place where it's a little bit post-apocalyptic and then it becomes sort of a video game type experience, an RPG game where the character with a crazy cat next to them named Dungeon are going through this journey. And I've only read the first book and there's seven books. So this weekend, I'm planning to start book two. Nice. I have to add that to my list. Ben has turned me into fiction reading. Yeah, I've been having a lot of fun. And I do feel like in a weird way, I'm getting more creative. And like, yeah. Yeah, I turned Mark on to Hyperion. I don't know if you've read that. I have not read Hyperion yet. Yeah. Yeah, really good. Project Kilmary too. Project Kilmary. Project Kilmary was great. Yeah. Yeah, I love that book. And now I'm actually on book seven or eight of the, it's an epic fantasy series called the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Oh, wow. And yeah, it's like a very, very, very cool. I'm big into like the fantasy book world, like Brandon Sanderson, all those like Mistborn and, you know, Way of Kings and stuff. So this is if people like that genre can check it out too. All right. Let's start wrapping. Yeah, let's do it. I wish we had another hour. But yeah, we got to start. We got to start wrapping. We'll do that next year. Yeah, yeah. We'll do a part two. This is the first one. And Josh, this has been amazing. Two kind of final questions before we hit our gratitude corner. One is where can people follow you? And then the second one is how can our audience be useful to you? No, look, a couple of places to follow me. You know, I give a lot of thoughts on Twitter or X. Josh Yellman, I've been doing that ever since I worked at that company. It's one of the rare products that I use more today than when I worked there. Most times you use your product when you work at a company so much, and then you stop using it as much. Twitter or X now is definitely that for me. Also, follow us on the A16Z newsletter. You can sign up at A16Z.com. I published a couple of things there, including a post on product management recently. And it's a great place to hear from all of us at A16Z. And then I still write some personal stuff on Medium. Medium.com slash Josh Yellman. So you can find me there as well. Those are probably the three best places to stay in touch with the stuff that I'm thinking about. Occasionally, I'll post on LinkedIn too. And anything beyond just following along, anything the audience can do to be helpful for you just at this moment? I mean, the first thing I always say is, keep building amazing things in the world. And if you are building stuff that you would love to talk to me or Andreessen Horowitz about, I'm very open to that. I'm just Jay Yellman. and horror it's about, I'm very open to that. I'm just jellman at a16z.com there. And keep paying it forward. You know, a lot of what I have gotten to do in my career is build amazing things with amazing people, but I'm just as proud of the people that I've helped find their own paths and support them on their journeys. And every time you've had some success, I love what you guys are doing to kind of help people along on their journeys too. You know, the Valley is so much about paying it forward. That's what makes our tech industry go. And so to everybody, if somebody else asked you for help, like stop what you're doing and try to go help because that paying it forward is so special. Yeah, amen. And then that's a perfect segue to our very special gratitude corner, which is the last question we ask, which is in the spirit of paying it forward, if you think back to your journey, which has been incredible so far, will you just make some time at the end of the conversation for you to thank one or multiple people who have had some kind of special impact on you? So we'd love to know who comes to mind. Yeah, I got two people or two groups. One is a Reid Hoffman and David Z. Reid was the founder of LinkedIn and David was a very early board member. And I spent time with them early in my career and then got a chance to partner with them at Greylock. And just the way that they helped me understand the world and think about consumer products is almost more than anything. And then even my latest is the person who's my boss at Apple, a guy named Kurt Knight. He's been at Apple for over 25 years. He's not that public in the world, but he runs product marketing for the operating systems there. And watching him operate within a company he's been part of for so long and kind of have that longevity and what he taught me about storytelling and being able to help Apple do this even better and learn the culture was such a gift. And my other boss there was a woman named Anne Tai. Like the two of them, I'm just so thankful for that as like a latest chapter in my journey that was just an incredible piece of it. Beautiful, awesome. Well, thank you to all those people. We'll do our best if we could find their profiles to link them if people wanna check them out. And then I just wanna say, I'm so happy that you're back on the public stage and able to talk about the stuff you're doing and founders will be very lucky that they now have a chance to partner with you again at A16Z and I think it's a great pickup for the A16Z that you joined. So thanks so much for taking the time to do this with us. Thanks so much. It's a great time to build in consumer again. So I'm happy to be part of it. Amazing. That's a wrap.