Episode · Lenny's Podcast · 2026-09-20
Lenny Rachitsky & Peter Sellis: books mentioned on Lenny's Podcast
90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter Sellis
Peter Sellis was the first product manager at Snapchat, where he spent seven years building one of the most beloved consumer products in history. He went on to serve as Head of Product at Discord, where he helped drive some of the fastest user growth the platform had seen.
Peter Sellis recommended How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid, When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein, and Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman, and discussed East of Eden by John Steinbeck.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia
Recommended“Two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people. I'm going to butcher the title a bit. Uh how to get filthy rich in rising Asia and when genius failed.”
Where to get it
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When Genius Failed
Recommended“Two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people. I'm going to butcher the title a bit. Uh how to get filthy rich in rising Asia and when genius failed.”
Where to get it
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Einstein's Dreams
Recommended“When Jesus failed is about the fall and the rise and fall of long-term capital management in late 1998 caused like one of the crashes or nearly averted crashes. And then my third one which I actually give to a lot of consumer PMs is um Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightiteman the physicist from MIT.”
Where to get it
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East of Eden
Discussed“There's this quote that I'm going to butcher because I don't have it in front of me. Um, that that is from John Steinback in um, East of Eden, I think, about the passage of time.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (1) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Passing The Fifth Discipline
“It's the Netflix book. Yeah about this that was a big one yeah sometimes you people say systems thinking then they go out and buy that book uh yeah with the with the slinky yeah it's like I'm a systems thinker now”