From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products | Peter Deng

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:00)
You built and led Facebook news feeds, you shipped the Messenger app as its own app, you launched ChatGPT Enterprise. What's an important lesson you've learned about what it takes to succeed building something from idea to one to billions?

**Peter Deng** (0:12)
You have to plan your chest moves out in advance. You have to really think before you act and build systems that are going to let you go sustainably faster.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:21)
What's the most counterintuitive lesson you've learned?

**Peter Deng** (0:23)
Sometimes your product actually doesn't matter. At Uber, I learned this because really, the price and the ETA at Uber was the product. Looking at it from a holistic perspective, we humans consume the entirety of the product. It's not to say that you shouldn't fix the bug, but it doesn't have as much of an impact as something that is more important to people.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:42)
What's one specific thing you think will change in a big way with AI that people don't think enough about?

**Peter Deng** (0:47)
Education is going to change. My son, he was nine at the time, built a custom GPT that you can type in any topic and it would give you a sentence that had every letter of the English alphabet. Isn't that mind-blowing? I can already see his brain rewiring.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (1:00)
What's one thing you look for in people you hire?

**Peter Deng** (1:03)
In six months, if I'm telling you what to do, I've hired the wrong person. It helps me and the person operate on a different level, where the goal is not, did you hit this OKR? The meta goal becomes, are we calibrating enough? Are we actually getting to a spot where in six months, you're the one telling me what needs to be done?

**Lenny Rachitsky** (1:20)
What's something you've learned about what it takes to be a great product person?

**Peter Deng** (1:22)
I think there are five different types of product managers. Number one is...

**Lenny Rachitsky** (1:27)
Today, my guest is Peter Deng. Peter is maybe the most under the radar, impactful product leader that you have never heard of. I often say that the best product people are not the people on Twitter and LinkedIn sharing advice, but the people who don't have time to do that because they are too busy doing the work. Peter is the epitome of this. He was VP of product at OpenAI, where he oversaw product design and engineering for ChatGPT and helped ship ChatGPT Enterprise, voice, memory, desktop, custom GPTs, and more. He also oversaw and built their first Growth Team. He was the first head of product at Instagram where he worked closely with Mike and Kevin and oversaw all product development including on content sharing, ads, growth, even helped build out their design and user research functions. He was also head of the Rider product team at Uber where he oversaw everything in the Rider app including big improvements to pickups and drop-offs in Uber Pool and airports. He also helped the team launch new products including Uber Reserve which is now approaching a $5 billion a year business. He also spent nearly 10 years at Facebook as their fourth ever product manager, where he built and led the team behind the current newsfeed product, the standalone messenger app, also photos and groups and homepage and profiles. He was also chief product officer at Airtable where he helped the company systemize how they built products and transitioned enterprise. He also led product management at Oculus. These days he is general partner at Felicis where he's able to bring everything he's learned to more founders as an investor. He has never done a podcast before or shared any of these lessons or stories publicly so you are in for a real treat. A huge thank you to Eric Antonow, Nick Turley, Lauryn Motamedi, Joanne Jang and Sandeep Jain for contributing questions and topics to this conversation. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. Also, if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free of a bunch of amazing products including Bolt, Linear, Superhuman, Notion, Perplexity and Granola. Check it out lennysnewsletter.com and click bundle. With that, I bring you Peter Deng. Many of you are building AI products, which is why I'm very excited to chat with Brandon Fu, founder and CEO of Paragon. Hey Brandon.

**Brandon Fu** (3:29)
Hey Lenny, thanks for having me.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (3:30)
So, integrations have become a big deal for AI products. Why is that?

**Brandon Fu** (3:35)
Integrations are mission critical for AI for two reasons. First, AI products need contacts from their customers' business data, such as Google Drive files, Slack messages or CRM records. Second, for AI products to automate work on behalf of users, AI agents need to be able to take action across these different third-party tools.