My wife, Carole, was recently on a work trip to Japan (she’s a baller) so I had eight days of solo parenting, which was challenging and also filled with quality time. Thanking the heavens for daycare - our daycare is the best. I also owe (1) our dog-sitter Russell, who refuses to take our money to watch George for long stretches when we need help and (2) our friends Zach+Laura who watched Gaia one night this week so that I could go to the Maven event (see below). Support systems are everything. And we loved our presents from Tokyo : )
Over the years I’ve found myself wanting some reflective time in nature on my birthday to take stock of everything.
To honor the tradition, I closed my laptop last Tuesday and did a chill 5-mile solo hike in Harriman State Park (~1 hr north of NYC) and it was gorgeous. Spring has finally arrived!
This year’s main takeaways: I’m doing all the right things, I need to get better at saying no, Clarity comes from looking within, My habits are who I am, I love building flywheels.
Grateful to do what I do 🫶
I was invited to a small gathering in Brooklyn earlier this week, organized by the Maven team. This was the third and final stop of their "Expert Salon" tour in SF, LA, and now NYC. There was a mix of Maven staff, experts who teach on the platform, and other interesting people.
I’ve been working with the Maven team as an instructor on the platform for ~ 2 years and it was special to finally meet them in person. The quality of guests was excellent and I learned a ton. I even got to meet some online friends in person for the first time.
We got a sneak peek at some new stuff Maven will announce soon and I won't spill the beans but cohort-based courses were just Maven's first act; I'm excited for the second because I think they get how courses fit into the overall portfolio of what they’re calling “experts”.
After Maven’s CEO Gagan Biyani and VP growth mallory contois shared their upcoming plans, the room clapped. They said neither SF nor LA clapped. I found that curious. Hmm.
The evening also provided additional internal validation that IRL stuff is a good use of time despite being not at all scalable. The quality of in-person dialogue and connection is just not possible online through DMs, comments, video, etc. Everyone I met is now more textured for me, and vice versa.
Excited to do a lot more IRL stuff this year and NYC is a great place for it 💪
Anthropic went from $1B to $30B ARR in under two years and they're strapped for strong PMs.
Anthropic has been our most requested guide at Insider Loops and their head of growth Amol Avasare just shared on Lenny's Podcast that PM teams across the company are stretched and Anthropic is actively hiring strong PMs.
If you're thinking about joining Anthropic, this is a great time to get in the door. I’m not saying it’ll be easy.
The timing of Lenny’s episode with Amol couldn't be better because the same day it dropped, we announced the launch of our Insider Loops PM interview guide for Anthropic. This is the 7th company we’re covering, joining OpenAI, Google, Stripe, DoorDash, Figma, and Uber.
To create this guide, we spoke off the record with PMs at Anthropic and candidates who recently went through their interview process to unpack each step of the loop and what's being evaluated.
Out of all the guides we've created, it feels like Anthropic takes culture interviews more seriously than any other company. They're looking for PMs they can trust with the heavy responsibility of bringing AGI to the world.
I joked to Marc Baselga when we were putting the final touches on the guide that it seems they're screening for PMs who can see the Black Mirror episode downstream of every decision and pick the *other* path.
After getting dozens of pings in recent months about how little information is available about Anthropic's PM interviews online, we believe our guide is now the best resource for candidates to understand the company’s PM interview process.
I'm sure the Anthropic loop will evolve quite a bit in the coming months and thanks to our steady flow of insights from real candidate, we'll update our guides on a weekly/monthly basis as new changes are rolled out. Nobody updates guides faster than us!
And a quick personal note: if I was looking for a PM role, Anthropic would probably be my top choice right now. What they're doing is impressive AF and the way they're working is just as fascinating as what they're shipping.
Want to see how top companies are designing PMs interviews?
Marc and I continue loving the podcast and recently published two new episodes 👇
What if the reason great talent keeps failing at your company has nothing to do with the talent — and everything to do with the environment you built around them?
What if the cognitive overhead of constant context-switching, endless meetings, and deciding what to work on next could be offloaded to a system that actually knows how you think?
Michael’s episode is getting wild traction - it’s already our #2 most downloaded episode of all time. His LinkedIn post about the episode got such a wave of interest from people who want to build their own chief of staff, that he put together a full step-by-step guide after the episode shipped, to give the people what they want 👇
Rick Rubin interviewing WeWork founder Adam Neumann under a tree in a beautiful garden. Wonderful conversation.
Shane Parrish interviewing James Clear was a great listen and reminded me how critical little habits and everyday behaviors are to long term results.
The latest season of For All Mankind on AppleTV. Love this show.
NotebookLM’s audio overviews have started to fill more of my listening time on walks and I’m loving this way of consuming content. I simply feed the URL of an article and it generates a 15-25 min conversational podcast covering the essence of the content in dialogue form. I think our brains are wired to consume content this way. Here are some of my recent favorites:
Authenticity as the Ultimate Creative Competitive Advantage (20 min)
From Hierarchy to Intelligence: Block’s New Organizational Design (25 min)
I always enjoyed numbers and shapes in school. Geometry and algebra felt fun. Solving for X and Y over and over was like doing puzzles!
But not everyone has that type of relationship with numbers. My wife Carole is now learning math on Duolingo (shout out Nickey Skarstad) and we want our daughter to develop a positive relationship with numbers as well.
So when I saw that Lenny Rachitsky‘s talented wife, Michelle Rial, was publishing a kid's picture book called Charts for Babies about… well, charts… I bought it immediately.
Last weekend I took Gaia with me to a small in-person live reading in Manhattan where I snagged the overdue selfie below. Our copy arrived mid-week and after Gaia did her own completely made up voiceover of every page, I was ultimately able to read it to hear and we both loved it. She slept like a logarithm 🥁
If you’re looking to get your young kids comfortable with shapes, charts, math and numbers, you should grab a copy of the book. It’s awesome.
Negotiation tips for candidates targeting $350K+. As my interview prep resources help more PMs land roles, I’m increasingly getting asked for comp negotiation advice. So I’ll be hosting a live session on Thursday 5/14 with my friend Josh Doody, a professional salary negotiation coach. You can RSVP for free here (recording sent after to all who signed up).
Toronto Product Conference. At the end of May, Marc and I are heading to Toronto for a live recording of the Supra Insider podcast in front of an audience of a couple hundred people (part of the Toronto Product Conference, which is generously hosting us). It’ll be my first time in Toronto and our first time recording live in front of an audience. Can’t wait.
🕵️♂️ Insider Loops. Company-specific PM interview guides for Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Stripe, DoorDash, Uber, and Figma (more coming soon). Rigorously researched and continuously updated with Marc Baselga.
📚 My self-paced PM Interview Bootcamp: Product Sense & Analytical Thinking. Selected by Lenny Rachitsky as a top product course on Maven (rated 4.9/5.0 with ~90 reviews).
🤖 My AI Practice Copilot for PM Interviews. Unlimited practice reps with calibrated feedback on Product Sense & Analytical Thinking questions. It’s like having a calibrated interview coach available 24/7. Over the past year, my Copilot has helped hundreds of PMs land roles at Meta, Google, OpenAI, Stripe, DoorDash, Uber, Datadog, Monday.com, and more. Testimonials on the site.
🤝 I offer a limited number of 1:1 coaching slots. Book here.
My most popular free resources:
🧠 My Product Sense Interview Template. Google sheet template for practicing product sense questions. Make a copy and get as many reps as you’d like with my frameworks. Updated regularly and fully compatible with my AI Copilot.
🔥 My guest post on Lenny’s Newsletter: The definitive guide to mastering product sense interviews.
📊 My Analytical Thinking Interview Template. Google sheet template for practicing analytical thinking questions. Make a copy and get as many reps as you’d like with my frameworks. Updated regularly and fully compatible with my AI Copilot.
🔥 My guest post on Lenny’s Newsletter: The definitive guide to mastering analytical thinking interviews.
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