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. Aren’t CEOs or founders—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. Have unique insights, incredible stories, and contrarian views on how to build great products, and be successful in work and life.

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

6. Big bonus points if they aren’t a white male.

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

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

2. They are building a product that is blowing up and top-of-mind for product builders, e.g. 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, succeeding in business as an introvert, landing a job, design, or engineering. But the bar for these exceptions is very high.