“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.”
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth · Product & Design · October 2026
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.
Transcript
…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.
…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.
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…
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.
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…
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?
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