Thinking like a gardener not a builder, organizing teams like slime mold, the adjacent possible, and other unconventional product advice | Alex Komoroske (Stripe, Google)

**Alex Komoroske** (0:00)
So much of the way that we tackle problems and build products is this builder mindset. It's like, I have a plan, I then manipulate things to match my plan and make it happen. And this is a way you can create tons of value. But the problem, though, is it can't possibly create more value than the effort that you put into it. What I look for instead are things that can be guarded, things that can grow on their own and that you can sort of direct or maybe give a little bit of extra energy to or curate over, and is a totally different mindset for it. If you do this properly, it looks like magic. I've been told that this is completely against all the advice that people get building products nowadays. But I think it's a very powerful approach that works in a lot of different contexts.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:40)
Today, my guest is Alex Komoroske. Alex is one of the most original, articulate and first principle thinkers on the future of product and tech that I've ever come across. This conversation will get your brain buzzing in all kinds of ways. Alex spent 13 years at Google, where he worked on Search, DoubleClick, he led Chrome's open web platform team for eight years, led Augmented Reality within Google Maps, and developed a new toolkit to align company-wide strategy from the bottom up. After a stint at Stripe as head of corporate strategy, he's currently founding a startup that aims to reimagine the web for the AI era. In our wide-ranging conversation, we cover how LLMs and Gen.AI will impact how we build product in the coming years, what skills will matter most as AI becomes a bigger part of our lives, what companies can learn from slime mold, organizational kayfabe, the adjacent possible, strategy salons, why you should be thinking more like a gardener than a builder, plus a bunch of productivity tips, life advice, and so much more. This was such a fun episode, and I am sure this is going to get your mind thinking in completely new ways. 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 it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Alex Komoroske. Alex, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

**Alex Komoroske** (2:01)
Thanks for having me.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (2:02)
I love the way your brain works. My brain immediately starts buzzing anytime I start reading some of your stuff. One of the more interesting things that you write and do, and a really interesting habit you have is, you actually have this doc that you keep called Bits and Bobs that I love. We're going to be touching a lot of the things that you share in this doc, Bits and Bobs, and we'll link to it. First of all, can you just explain this doc, Bits and Bobs, what's it about? Yeah.

**Alex Komoroske** (2:28)
I think it's like 600 pages now, it's just one Google doc. Every so often, almost every day, someone will accidentally add a suggestion, like add a space or something because it takes so long to load, that while they're waiting, they'll tap on the screen and then it will turn into taps on adding a comment or something.
I take a lot of notes. I tell people when I'm in meetings with them, I'm like, if you see me on my phone or typing, that means I think you said something very interesting and I'm writing it down. It's not that I'm just disengaged, I just try to collect all these ideas and then once a week I go through, I take a few hours and I just reflect to myself and try to find patterns and unpack and find meaning in things and I write those down and I started sometime in the past sharing those publicly and it's now become a thing. I literally can't stop doing. I just find someone was like, oh, if you get more exposure for this, if you broke these up in the tweets that you sent out once, throughout the day, it's like, I did this for me. I'm happy to let other people see and peek into my weird mental process if they want. This is 100 percent about my own self-reflection and it's not designed. I don't want anyone to feel compelled to read it or, in fact, it's designed a little bit to be, I allow myself to be a little bit illegible. I want people to have to work a little bit with it and it's not going to lay it out on a platter. It's going to jump between different things. I'll use terminology sometimes that is, what are you talking about? I do that specifically. I don't want anyone to read it and be like, oh, it sucks. It wasn't worth my time. It's like, cool. It's a six-page Google Doc by just unspooled insights. It's okay for you to not want to dive into that.