Succeeding as an introvert, building zero-to-one, and why you should PM your career like you PM your product | Deb Liu (CEO of Ancestry, ex-Facebook, PayPal, eBay)

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:00)
You're a VP of Product at Facebook, you're a Director at eBay and PayPal, you're on the board of Intuit, you've been the CEO of Ancestry now for the past three and a half years. This is a career path that a lot of people dream of.

**Deb Liu** (0:11)
You know, some of the best PMs I have ever worked with are terrible PMs for their careers. They just drift from job to job. Hey, should I take this role or this role? Like, how do I think about this? But if I said you had to write a spec for your career, what does success look like? How are you going to get there?

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:24)
You wrote this awesome post about introverts and how hard it is to be successful as an introvert.

**Deb Liu** (0:28)
The workplace is really favoring people who can speak up. It looks like self-promotion. I wouldn't want to do that because it's self-promotion. But instead, what if I called it educating about all the great work your team has been doing? Helping people see why your team should get more resources. You have to actually share what you do.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:45)
Is there something that you believe that you think most other people don't believe?

**Deb Liu** (0:48)
The most important career decision you make is who you marry. Is this person lifting you up or pushing you back? You will have a much more successful career if your home life is in balance. It's like a yin and a yang.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (1:03)
Today, my guest is Deb Liu. Deb was VP of Product at Facebook where she spent over 11 years, and while there created and led Facebook Marketplace, which is now used by over 1 billion people monthly, she also led the development of Facebook's first mobile ad product for apps and its mobile ad network, also built the company's games business and payments platform including Facebook Pay. Prior to Facebook, she was director at both PayPal and eBay. She's on the board of Intuit, and for the past three and a half years, she's been the CEO of Ancestry. I actually generally have a rule of no CEOs on this podcast, but to me Deb is a great exception because she is a product person at heart. In our conversation, Deb shares a ton of tactical career advice, including why resilience is so key to career success, how to PM your career like you PM your product, how to be successful in business as an introvert, what she's learned about building multiple billion dollars zero to one businesses within a large company like Facebook, and so much more. Deb is so full of wisdom, and I'm really excited to share her insights with more people. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Deb Liu.
Deb, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

**Deb Liu** (2:21)
It's wonderful to be here, Lenny.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (2:23)
It's wonderful to have you here. You have had such an incredible career. You're a VP of Product at Facebook, you're a Director at eBay and PayPal, you're on the board of Intuit, you've been the CEO of Ancestry now for the past three and a half years. This is a career path that a lot of people dream of, and honestly, just like one of those roles is a dream for a lot of people. I wanted to start with just this question, and I want to see where the conversation takes us. If you could give one specific piece of advice to someone that's looking to do well in their career or to do better in their career based on what has worked well for you, what would that be?

**Deb Liu** (3:02)
Always be learning, and I tell this to everybody. I often tell people someone who's always learning is always going to exceed someone who's the expert today. You're going to find people, the one thing about school is that we go to school and there's such a thing as getting 100 on the test, a perfect score on the SAT, graduating with a 4.0. Well, there's nothing like that in careers, right? We think it's actually a non-linear experience, and there's always something better than you at speaking, or presenting, or strategy, or execution. But if you're always learning, learning from the best, getting feedback, you're always going to get better every single day. That's what I have always held, which is each job I took, I didn't necessarily qualify for it, I wasn't necessarily the very best at it, and so I became a student of being better at that job.