Episode · Lenny's Podcast · 2025-11-20
Lenny Rachitsky & Stewart Butterfield: books mentioned on Lenny's Podcast
Slack founder: Mental models for building products people love ft. Stewart Butterfield
Stewart Butterfield is the co-founder of Slack and Flickr, two of the most influential products in internet history. After selling Slack to Salesforce in one of tech’s biggest acquisitions, he’s been focused on family, philanthropy, and creative projects.
Stewart Butterfield recommended Positioning by Al Ries and others, discussed Don't Make Me Think! by Steve Krug and Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke, and criticized Why Nothing Works by Marvin Harris.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Don't Make Me Think!
Discussed“And if there is one mantra that I would use to replace that, it's don't make me think. I don't know if you remember that that book. Absolutely.”
Where to get it
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Why Nothing Works
Critiqued“There's a book called Why Nothing Works recently, which is like It's not an I'm sorry to the author if they They doubt they're listening, but just give It's not like an amazingly written book.”
Where to get it
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Positioning
Recommended“This is book positioning um which is an absolute classic. It's very short. I would recommend everyone read it. Where the the point of it is from my perspective it's almost impossible to create a net new idea in someone's head.”
Where to get it
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Thinking in Bets
Discussed“I think you have to really be coldly rational and Now you know, some of this shows up in the book um thinking about Some of it's in Andy second book. The title of which I'm forgetting right now, but I'm someone will will know it.”
Where to get it
