Frameworks for product differentiation, team building, and thinking from first principles | Ayo Omojola (Carbon Health, Cash App)

**Ayo Omojola** (0:00)
Cash App, as a team, we really cared about what we could do that was different and better than what else existed in the market. Being different is not enough, because it's very easy to build a thing that's different from what exists today, because you just have to look at what exists today and build something else. Being better is not enough, because it's also easy to say, hey, I'm going to make this thing better and just charge you more money for it.
It has to be better than what exists today in a way that matters to the end user. And for us, for a long time, it was. When someone says, hey, why are you better than Vemno? I'd be like, try and send me a dollar that I can use now. And there was only one app you could do it with.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:35)
Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today, my guest is Ayo Omojola. Ayo co-created and scaled Square's Popular Cash Card alongside the hugely popular Cash App. He's currently Chief Product Officer at Carbon Health, one of the biggest and fastest growing health tech companies in the world. He's a former founder, he's on the board of Pinwheel and he's an angel investor in companies like Mercury Bank, Faire, Modern Treasury and dozens of other startups. In today's episode, we dig into lessons from building and scaling the Cash Card and the Cash App, the importance of differentiation when you're building a consumer product or any sort of product, how to successfully build a startup within a startup, how to succeed in both fintech and in health tech, plus my favorite part of the conversation, a handful of incredibly insightful and practical principles and philosophies around hiring, team building, leadership and going deep on problems. Ayo is such a fascinated human and leader and I am excited for you to learn from him. With that, I bring you Ayo Omojola after a short word from our sponsors.
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Io, welcome to the podcast.

**Ayo Omojola** (4:12)
Thank you for having me.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (4:13)
I have a feeling this is gonna be a really fun conversation.