Episode · Lenny's Podcast · 2026-09-08
Lenny Rachitsky & Roman Ugarte: books mentioned on Lenny's Podcast
How we built Grok Bot in a month | Roman Ugarte (SpaceXAI)
Roman Ugarte helped incubate and build Grok Bot, the popular new knowledge-work agent from SpaceXAI. A small, isolated team took it from first line of code to a working internal product in four weeks, and to a hugely successful public launch just three weeks later.
Roman Ugarte recommended Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut and others and The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Cat's Cradle
Recommended“One is I love Kerbonagget. Uh, so Cat's Cradle has been a fun fun recommendation that and a copy that I bought many friends before.”
Where to get it
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The War of Art
Recommended“And then second is The War of Art by Steven Presfield, uh, that I find myself frequently coming back to, even if it's just a page or two at a time. Um, and I'd recommend for anybody.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (1) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Passing Desiderata
“Um but I love the desiderata which I don't know if you've read but um I have it on my on my door uh and I've had it since I was a teenager and everywhere I move I kind of paste it there and it's it's a very short poem”