Things Josh Woodward Has Said on Podcasts

“We'll hear sometimes people talk about what's someone's learning rate? Do they have a growth mindset? … I'm actually looking a lot right now for people, what's their unlearning rate? Like, how fast can they learn something and then walk away from it?” — Josh Woodward, Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Asked which skills are rising in value among the people he works with, Woodward skips taste and vibe coding. He names "unlearning rate": how fast someone drops what they believed once their product tests say otherwise.

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth · 2026-10-11 Permalink → Listen →

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth Around 35:46 into the episode

Josh Woodward

Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

Lenny Rachitsky

…What skills are you finding are trending up in value in the people that you're working with? And what do you feel are trending down when you look at people who are doing really well now? What are the kind of attributes and skills of those people versus things that are maybe less important now?

Josh Woodward

Yeah, I feel like there's a whole lot out there on taste and judgment and vibe coding and all of that. I guess the things I'm looking for, I'm always trying to find like what are the missed price signals. And so, like, one, I think, is how we'll hear sometimes people talk about like, what's someone's like learning rate? Like, do they have a growth mindset? What's their learning rate? I'm actually looking a lot right now for people, what's their unlearning rate? Like, how fast can they learn something and then walk away from it? Based on maybe what they're seeing when they test their product or something. So, unlearning rate is one. Another one I'm interested in, I read a book a year or so ago about Roger Federer, the amazing tennis player. And there was this phrase in there about Federer had explosive endurance. It's just this beautiful turn of phrase and with the alliteration and everything. But it's like there's…

Lenny Rachitsky

Yeah, these are so interesting. On that last one, is that kind of a growing, emerging, even more important skill you're finding with Rise of AI? And I'm curious why.

Josh Woodward

I think so for a couple of reasons. I mean, I would say one maybe is like uniquely Google. It's a larger organization. So you've got to be able to kind of do that. But the ones that don't feel uniquely Google, one, it feels like as the execution costs of making products goes down, we'll be able to…

Lenny Rachitsky

along those lines i imagine you have been pulling designers engineers and pms into labs and they kind of all kind of work together and sometimes different functions take leads is there has there been a shift in who you find is most uh impactful and successful in leading product ideas labs teams in…

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

“When you're showing people early prototypes, what I'm always doing in those is you're looking at people's eyes and that is the metric. It is not a DAU over a MAU, it's not a D7 retention. It's none of that. … If your eyes kind of light up, if you lean in, these are the kind of signals you're looking for.” — Josh Woodward, Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Lenny Rachitsky asked what early product-market fit really looks like. Woodward, who runs Google Labs, says it is more art than science in the early days. He also tells teams to fall in love with the problem, not the product, because a product usually takes three to five pivots.

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth · 2026-10-11 Permalink → Listen →

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth Around 22:34 into the episode

Josh Woodward

…never been possible that I kind of made, it was like that accessible. So maybe those are two examples. We also have other examples where we get excited. We try to build some product. It's just not good. So, you know, that's the other thing is a little bit of like a game of numbers in this as well.

Lenny Rachitsky

…seen more ideas thrown at the wall and tried and prototype than maybe anyone else. I don't know if that's true, but it feels true. What are signs to you that this is something we need to double down on? And what's something that might surprise people about what product market fit looks like? Yeah.

Josh Woodward

Yeah, I think one of the maybe trickiest parts of it is it is way more art than science. I wish it was science. Like we know how to run science experiments, make data-driven decisions, set OKRs, like all this process that helps. Like sometimes in the early days, Lenny, it's literally a couple of people on the team who might just have conviction and they're just like, I think the future is going to look like this. And I don't, I can't explain it. That's what's hard to like that advice is just not that useful or helpful, but I would say that's some of it. I think maybe a little more useful. We talk a lot about how do we get outside the building and just show people prototypes. And when you're showing people early prototypes, what I'm always doing in those is you're looking at people's eyes and like, that is the metric. Like, it is not a DAO, it's not a DAO over a MAO, it's not a D7 retention. It's none of that. It's literally like, hey, like, Lenny, did you see this? What do you think about this? And like, if your eyes kind of light up, if you lean in, these are the kind of signals you're…

Lenny Rachitsky

Those are actually very concrete, specific things to look for. The eyes, the eyes light up. A way I've heard someone else describe this as their pupils dilate.

Josh Woodward

Yes. That's right. And you know, too, right? When you're talking to someone, if they're having a good time, if they're into it, or if they're just bored out of their mind and you're showing them some dumb product. So it's really like, can you hit a nerve with like a pain point in their life where…

Lenny Rachitsky

So having that context of it's clear when things are product market fitting and their liars' eyes are lighting up. What are signs that it's time to kill an idea?

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

Asked which skills are rising in value on his teams, Woodward names "unlearning rate": how quickly someone drops an idea once their product tests show it's wrong. He also lists "explosive endurance" and the ability to build trust with people as well as with agents.

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Josh Woodward

Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

Lenny Rachitsky

Josh Woodward

Lenny Rachitsky

Yeah, these are so interesting. On that last one, is that kind of a growing, emerging, even more important skill you're finding with Rise of AI? And I'm curious why.

Josh Woodward

Lenny Rachitsky

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

Lenny Rachitsky asked whether every company should have a frontier team testing new AI tools. Woodward, who runs Google Labs, agrees, but says the hard part is linking that team back to the main company so its work isn't written off as toys.

Lenny's Newsletter · 2026-10-11 Permalink → Listen →

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Josh Woodward

…a culture and an environment where you unblock a lot of stuff so you can just let people cook? And so that's the, that's the other part of it is like kind of creating that environment. But that we think about planning is kind of almost like rolling six months maybe is to answer your question.

Lenny Rachitsky

…team that's dedicated to testing out the new stuff. And basically it's their job, trial the new stuff, report on what we need to pay attention to so that the rest of the company can not have to be distracted and focus on the task at hand. How do you feel about that as a model for companies?

Josh Woodward

I think every company definitely needs a set of people, a team, however you want to manifest it. That is their job is to be at the frontier. And they're almost like, if they haven't heard about the latest hot thing viral on X in the last 24 hours, it's like, what are you doing at your job? You know what I mean? So I think there's definitely an element of like, you want people plugged in to like the hive mind of kind of how people are building and thinking in all the model releases. They're the people who have like eight, $200 a month subscriptions on everything. Do you know what I mean? So like, you know, you have to kind of architect the organization where that can exist. I think the second thing though, that's just as important is the environment of which those people can build. And so that's like the other, maybe like part of that. And then I think the third part, which is honestly where if you look at the history and I've read a bunch of Books on this because most, like, if you just look at the data, a large company who starts a lab, the lab is usually ineffective and fizzles out after about three to four years. Or it may have…

Lenny Rachitsky

Yeah. It's interesting. I was just like, even Anthropic has a labs team, like the most cutting edge company. They're, you know, just like at the frontier already. They're like, okay, but we also need a labs team to actually watch the frontier frontier.

Josh Woodward

Yeah, that's right. Well, one thing we joke about too, inside as labs has grown now, and we've had a few projects, thankfully, have kind of hit and are, you know, lots of users now and growing. We've actually internally to this point of like common language, what we started to find was a bigger…

Lenny Rachitsky

Say someone listening is convinced they should set up a frontier team, a labs team. And it feels like labs teams have evolved a little bit. And it used to be like build the next big business unit is like the idea here. It's like, okay, what's like a new technology that is unlocking something or a…

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