Lenny's Podcast guest policy

Background: I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover concrete, actionable, and tactical advice to help listeners build, launch, and grow their own product. The podcast is a top 10 tech podcast globally, the #1 product/growth podcast in the world, and each episode goes out to my 1m+ newsletter subscriber base.

My ideal guests:

1. Not a CEO or founder—I index towards less-known people further down the ladder.

2. Have consistently built great, super successful products that people love.

3. Haven’t done many other podcasts or interviews.

4. Are able to contribute something new to the broader conversation—unique insights, incredible stories, or contrarian views.

5. Are able to clearly and succinctly communicate these insights.

6. Big bonus points for diverse backgrounds.

I have two exceptions for the no CEOs/founder rule above:

1. They are legendary founders, e.g. Brian Chesky, Marc Benioff, Tobi Lütke.

2. They are building a product that product builders are going wild for, e.g. Cursor, v0, Lovable, Bolt, Replit.

Outside of this sweet spot above, I also bring on people who are world-class at adjacent skills, such as public speaking, getting a job, product design, engineering, etc. But the bar for these exceptions is exceptionally high.