Everything is ugly, so go build something that isn't — Raiza Martin, Huxe (ex NotebookLM)

Channel: aiDotEngineer

Published at: 2025-07-28

YouTube video id: yG5d5UaGz1M

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG5d5UaGz1M

[Music]
Really quick show of hands. How many
folks actually work in product?
Wow. Okay. Engineering,
UX. Okay. I feel like there's definitely
some overlap there, right? But that's
that's exactly what we're seeing happen
right now. Sorry, I have to keep walking
over here because I'm so short. Like, if
I stand here, I can't see you. Um, but
what what's crazy is I feel like we're
all doing all the jobs now, right? Like
that's the crazy thing about AI. That's
the crazy thing about right now. And uh
I wonder how much longer it's going to
be relevant for to ask, you know, what
do you do? What do you do at your
company? Because chances are you're
probably doing everything. And you can,
right, with with some ease. And so I
think a lot of questions, people ask me
this all the time. Students in
particular ask me this all the time. Uh
so what does product do like in this new
world? And so the way that I think about
product is kind of like a multi-layer
cake. And I think that it starts with
how we think about ourselves. And I know
this is like kind of a weird topic. is
like not super technical but I think
it's probably one of the most important
which is uh I remember when it was
considered technical to be uh the type
of PM that could write your own SQL
queries right but you know if I said
that to you now like it's kind of silly
because everybody knows how to write
their own SQL queries because chatgbt
does right like all you have to do is to
know what question you're asking and
then you can do it right but it's not
just like these little tasks that you
can do it's also
like the entire roles themselves that
are changing because it's easier than
ever to access expertise or simulate it
right so in a world where the jobs are
blending together I feel like it's even
more important to understand you know
where are you coming from what is the
value that you bring you know coming
from yourself and then there's this
other thing that's really interesting
that's happening which is teams are
becoming drastically reconfigured and
even at like a super basic level. Like
if you think about it, every team now
has a bunch of like invisible
participants, right? Like every doc,
every slide, every little bit of thing
that is passed around or created,
there's like a chat GPT or a claude or a
Gemini behind that thing, right? Like
most of the time, even when I read
something like with my own raw eyeballs,
I'll still give it to ChatGpt and be
like, "What did I miss?" Right? Like
here's my takeaways. What's yours? And
that's crazy because teams are now fully
augmented, right? We've got like five
people on a team and we've got five chat
GPTs and that's crazy. We don't really
know what that means, right? But we've
got we've got superpowers now. How are
we going to use it? And then there's
this layer which I think is like super
interesting which is this is where the
title slide comes from where um I think
products come from from people like deep
within people, right? You pull an idea
out of yourself and you translate it
into technology and that's what a
product is. But when you look at every
product that we are using, you can tell
we are in the clunky awkward years,
right? You can tell everything is about
to change. And literally everything we
are using is the ugliest that it will
ever be because everything we use was
created in like the pre-ai era where you
know we had to imagine well how do I
make this thing work like if I press
this button like it makes a J on my
screen like now it feels like kind of
strange like when you think about the
richness of like the interactions that
are possible it now feels kind of
strange to use like an everyday thing
like a microwave or maybe it's just me
maybe I'm the only one who wants like an
AI AI microwave, right? Or whatever
whatever that thing does. Um, but I
think what I'm trying to say is like
we're starting to assemble the shapes of
what we think AI is really capable of
and what it can deliver. And I think
that the best products out there haven't
been discovered yet.
How do we discover it? Well, I think the
answer lies in the final layer and sort
of typically right what a product
manager would say. I think it's in the
user layer. And uh what I mean by this
is I don't know if you all have noticed
it but there is this kind of like
consumer unrest right where as we use
products like chat GBT cursor claude
right you start to see wow it's super
easy to use this [ __ ] it's just like I
have to say what I want and something
magical comes back and now I have to go
use the rest of this dumb thing like
dumb products out there that don't do
that and so you have a little bit of
this chasm now where you have these
super powerful, really intuitive, really
smart products and you have the rest of
the world which is just like janky. And
I think that what we're going to see is
that there's going to be a phase where
everything gets rebuilt, right? So
how should we think about rebuilding?
Well, first of all, I think we should
not underell the fact that there is a
lot of chaos. Like all the time, I think
I try to emphasize this to people. Even
though things are like really cool and
pretty magical, it's also pretty [ __ ]
hard because each of these layers is
being effectively rewritten and that is
not without cost, right? Like even the
first question I asked which was like,
"Hey, what do you do for a living?" Like
it's kind of weird. Like it's really
uncomfortable to be like, "I don't
know." like are they still going to be
hiring product managers next year? Not
sure. Engineers don't know. Designers
maybe, right? But for the most part,
right, that that unrest lives inside of
us at each of these layers. And that's
crazy. And so I started out this spiel
asking, you know, what is the role of
product? And ultimately,
I think that complimentary to chaos is
always opportunity, right? And our job
as product people, I I don't say product
managers, I think just like whoever you
are, right? Like if you embody sort of
like the force behind a product, this
applies to you. Your job is to find the
nugget of opportunity out there and
explode it like a popcorn kernel, right?
Like that is your singular job. And I
think it's actually kind of exciting if
you work at an organization where every
person embraces this mission.
Okay, so my talk is largely about this
opportunity and how I think you should
go about exploding it. Um, I think there
are a lot of talks that you could attend
that tell you sort of practically how
to, you know, technically build
products, but like I I really want to
talk through sort of the principles that
I use to drive product building, right?
So, let's jump in. What does it take to
build a great AI product?
So I think first I want to acknowledge
that for folks who have shipped things
uh especially you know if you're a part
of a team or a company I think that
building a product is a forceful
experience like I tried to think about
the right word to use here. I actually
first was like, I think it's a violent
experience. And my team was like, I
don't know if you can say that, right?
Like, I'm pretty sure people don't know
if like a tech job is violent. And I was
like, okay, okay, okay. It's forceful,
right? And what I mean when I say that
is I think that you almost have to force
a product into existence. And I don't
mean sort of like the hobby stuff,
right? Like I mean to truly build
something that can meaningfully exist as
a product that has a place in people's
lives like that takes a lot of force and
I think that to to do that to do that
particularly well you need a lot of
personal clarity right and it's like
it's like this thing that is inside of
like an individual person right
sometimes we talk about clarity we talk
about like oh the team has to be clear
on this the org has to be clear on this
it no right like I don't think that's
where it starts. I actually think it has
to start with sort of a singular
individual that like carries this
clarity with them, right? Because once
you know the what of of what you're
building and the why of it, that's real
energy. And I think when people talk
about technology, we're always talking
about technology, tech, the stack, etc.,
right? Hiring. I think everything we are
talking about is just a transformed
energy that comes from people. And so
ultimately this personal clarity is
what's going to give you the energy to
push your team, to push your
stakeholders, and to push your users
because it's like it's it's really hard.
And your primary role is just to
cultivate that relentlessly. And I think
it's three things, right? It's the
clarity of your vision, the clarity of
your purpose, and the clarity of taste,
which I'll talk more about in just a
little bit. I'll tell you a short story
which is has anybody ever seen this or
used this thing?
No. Yes. Okay. Well, this was the first
version of Notebook LM. It was called
Tailwind. We announced it at Google IO
in 2023.
And I will never forget the road to get
to this thing, right? Like I think the
amount of people that told me it was
stupid was actually like like
fascinatingly high. Uh, and it it was
really great that I was like, "Wow, I
think it might actually be stupid." But
it's like that force, right? That
personal clarity that gave me the energy
to keep driving forward with it. And in
reality, the reason why I had so much
personal clarity, I don't think a lot of
people know this, but I had dropped out
of college and I went back to school
full-time when I was working at Google.
And so, I was full-time in college. I
was full-time building Notebook LM. And
I was like, I don't know how else to
explain this to you, but if I could just
have a tool where I put a bunch of [ __ ]
in it, right? Like just a bunch of docs,
a bunch of slides, and I just chat with
it and it does something for me, that
seems really valuable. Like I've never
been able to do that before, right? And
I'm not just bolting it on. Like I want
to build this thing from the ground up.
And so every time somebody would tell me
it was stupid, whether it was a user, a
stakeholder, teammates even would be
like, I don't understand, right? I would
say no. I do though, right? Like I get
it. I know why this thing is important.
And so personal clarity will get you far
and it will get your team far. Um and so
I highly recommend starting from this
place of just like cultivating this
energy.
Okay. So now you have clarity. Great.
How do you turn that into a real thing?
Well, I think that the first thing that
I always tell people to do is you have
to start with the job and not the
pixels, right? Because when we talk
about taste, I think sometimes people
feel that that it's about an aesthetic
thing, but I actually think it's about
an outcome, right? I think it's about
the question of what is the single
outcome that your product has to deliver
every time for every user flawlessly.
Like that is purpose, right? purpose is
the north star that tells you whether a
feature is uh gold or if it's just
baggage and it's the antidote to uh a
really common problem that I see all the
time which is AI demo disease which is
hey this thing is a cool demo I made it
it demos really well I made a really
cool Twitter video or whatever but these
are not real products right if they're
grounded in hype if they're grounded in
sort of like trying to ride the waves of
chaos you're not going to get anywhere.
So purpose is what helps you say no to
novelty when it's deluding your core
job, right? Users literally do not give
a [ __ ] if something is AI. I think
people are actually kind of tired of the
word. I think that what people care
about ultimately is when they have an
intent and you deliver it to them in a
way that feels inevitable, right? And I
think we go back to that energy, right?
It takes energy to get there. It's very
hard and you need to be purpose obsessed
in order to get there. And here's
another example um that I want to give
which is I was singularly obsessed with
this use case of like I want to put 50
things in the tool and I want to be able
to do stuff with it and summarization
was a really big one because I figured
if you could do this you could certainly
do a lot more things across data right
and uh it was really hard to do this. It
was really hard for UX reasons. It was
really hard for sort of the actual way
that we were able to generate this in a
smart way. But the tradeoff is that once
we built this auto summary into notebook
LM, it made it so much easier for people
to understand a really foreign concept
at the time, right? Which is like the
concept that I would put 50 files in one
place and I would interact with it in
this different way that we hadn't really
done before. It it was like a little
token feature that was both a tutorial
and was useful at a glance. But it's
like you could not have arrived at this
type of idea which looks really basic
just like from the outside of it. You
could not have arrived at it if you were
not sort of obsessively trying to drive
at like the value that you're trying to
deliver to somebody.
And so I think that when we think about
the value and what we're trying to give
to users, I think that in reality the
value of a product is a promise, right?
Like ultimately any product is a promise
to a user and you're making claims about
what it can do, right? So then the user
tries it. But trust is oxygen and using
a product is like a transaction between
the user and the company. And without
it, you're nothing, right? You have like
a pretty limited credit. Like most
products get a credit of like negative
one because not everybody's going to
want to try your [ __ ] And then like the
person that does like they don't have
the patience for whatever things you put
in there. They only have patience for
one thing. And so I think one of the
best ways that you can actually build
trust is to expose the edges, right?
Show people where the model is dumb and
make it seamless between the user and
the product. like don't paper over it
because even though we have these really
smart incredible models, the way that we
are building them is still like a very
human type of thing. So when you when
you give a product to a person, you are
exposing your own process, your own
thought process, your own workflow to
them and you're making a promise about
how it works. And so when it when it
fails, when it doesn't work, think about
how you go about it in the most human
way possible, right? Like I I see this
all the time where people are trying to
instrument for like the best use case
but not the worst case and so you kind
of have this like weird halfbaked
product in space where it's purely
machine and very little human involved.
I think on this note, I want to say
something that sounds really dumb and
basic, but I think that you have to nail
the deterministic things before the
delightful probabilistic bits because at
the end of the day, a good app is still
just a really good app. Like, it's just
an app, right? And it's like doesn't
matter what you jam in there, it's still
an app.
Uh this is another one of like sort of
the older uh user interfaces we had in
notebook. But users routinely would do
this thing where they would upload
sources and they would enter a query
like summarize this doc
summarize this doc and this doc only
summarize only this concept. And this
was very hard to do in the early days of
notebook LM particularly with the
smaller context windows. And one of the
things that we saw was the query type
for summarization was like in terms of
like the the percent of like first
queries, it was like 90%. 90% of like
users their first query was a
summarization query and it was this
testing behavior, right? People were
trying it out. They were like, I heard
about this thing. Okay, saw the website.
Cool. I'm gonna upload a thing. Like
think about all the steps the user went
through to get there. user gets there,
they upload something, they enter
summarize, and it it bors. It didn't
work. So, the user leaves, they leave
forever.
But like, think about like the amount of
time that like that person put into it
because you made a promise to them that
it was going to do exactly that. And so,
I think that one of the things I want to
say about trust is it's not it's not
cheap, right? If you get a user to try
your product, make it as good as [ __ ]
possible the first time because they're
not going to come back. In fact, it was
like so detrimental the summarization
use case that it was like all I thought
about uh for a very long for a very long
time.
Okay. So, let's let's say you managed to
earn the trust of your users. You've got
a bunch of them. They love it. And
really uh to be honest with you, in real
life, right, like this this flow that
we're describing, it's actually like a
matter of seconds for a person. This is
like one minute, right, for you to
deliver on this whole thing. Um, but you
get to earn the next thing after we have
trust, which is the potential to
delight. And I think with notebook, this
was like really cool where I feel like
um the delightfulness was that it was
unexpected and it was kind of funny
where people would upload documents and
then they would make a podcast and
they're like, I don't know what it's
going to say. Like it could be kind of
goofy. It could be pretty funny. And I
think there's like an aspect in there
that is like just very playful, right?
like delightfulness is almost is very
similar to playfulness and it sort of
lives I think in this interesting space
between technical capabilities and user
expectations because it's like you kind
of have to meet users where they are but
you have to push them just a little bit
you know where once you've built trust
you can push just one step past what's
familiar and not spook anybody because I
I think we we've seen this too right
like when things are like too weird it's
like spooky and people are like I don't
you know, I'm not going to look at it
anymore. I feel like people felt this
way about robots for a long time. And
so, I think that in reality, kind of
just going back to the trust piece, we
get one chance to really make the
machine feel like magic. And so, my my
tip here is actually just like a very
like kind of a tactical one, which is I
think you need to surface delightfulness
through agency and not trickery, right?
where it's like the user has to feel
like they are part of it that they are
steering and it feels self-directed and
that was one of the big things about
notebookm which was like it wasn't like
a random button right it was like I knew
the specific document I had uploaded I
knew that it was going to make something
magical for me but it felt like equal
parts me and the machine right it wasn't
just the machine like it felt like there
was like a healthy tension between there
where the machine had a real opportunity
to delight me
um I'm not going to show an example here
in particular, but I want to make a
point about delightfulness, which is it
is actually really hard to delight
people if you're doing too much [ __ ]
right? And I really think that you're
either shipping model capabilities or
actual new outcomes. There is no real in
between here. And this is where sort of
like the stack will will come to kind of
haunt you where do you know the outcome
that you are optimizing for? Do you know
how the user is supposed to get there?
Do you know what is preventing users
from getting there? you know, do you
know how to show them what is possible
with the system? And I think these are
sort of like kind of deep gnarly
questions and it's just like something
that you will only get to by using the
product a lot yourself. I think that
that is the way to build a delightful
product, right? Is to not test your
product, but to sort of live and breathe
it and and live the life of your users.
Like who do you think is going to use
this thing? Like if you are not that
person then you have to become that
person because that's the only way that
I think you can start to feel at the
borders of what people are ready for and
what the technology is capable of right
I think I think that's ultimately like
the the little trick to getting within
that space and building something
interesting
okay finally I think that delight shows
us what the product can do and what's
magical about it but I think what a lot
of people are not actually as judicious
about is what it should do. Uh, and this
is this is kind of like a weird piece of
advice, especially because like I've
made this mistake many many many times.
Like I only say this from sort of the
tried and tested experience of being a
kitchen sink person, right? And we've
all used products like this where uh
when you look around you there's there's
plenty of examples where it kind of
feels like you have not shipped your POV
on the world. you actually just shipped
a kitchen sink of model capabilities
with your slight flare on it, right?
Like maybe you changed the color and
that's kind of cool because you know I
think like we're all still living in the
era of like research previews like it's
cool to know what the models can do.
Like it's ever increasing in capability
but I think like to true end users like
it's probably not that interesting,
right? Because that is just chatgbt.
Like I'll just use chat GBT. I don't
think you're gonna do a better job than
them. Um, and it's probably not right to
jam everything in there and try to see
what's sticking with who, right? So, the
barrier to shipping, especially
nowadays, it is not it's not about the
capability, right? It's about judgment.
And the thing that I try to ask myself
is, you know, does this product respect
user time, data, and agency? Because I
really believe that restraint in
particular, right, this is a new
innovation multiplier. Like if you
yourself have that personal clarity, you
have that purpose, and you are focused,
you're driven, you're resilient, like
100%. People are going to tell you stuff
like, "Well, this is like the simplest
thing ever. How do you aim to compete?"
Well, exactly. By being focused, right?
By doing one thing incredibly reasonably
well. And you will get to a point where
the thing is so excellent that you are
beginning to really delight people. Like
you will have more of an intuition about
the borders that I was talking about in
the previous slide.
I think one last note I'll say on
delightfulness is that I mean on the
kitchen sink is that users are not that
different from you or me right like we
are all users of something and so think
about the last time you tried something
new like think about how much patience
you had for it and think about how
annoying it was when you tried it and
you're like I just don't know what I
would do with this thing like it does
like 30 things but I don't know when I
would use it right and that's just like
what happens when you sort of let the
chaos overwhelm you and you're not clear
about what the whole point of like your
thing is, right? And that that comes
that comes from a place that I think is
like the entire stack. Like if you
yourself don't know what you're trying
to do with yourself, then you don't know
what to do with your product. Then you
don't know which model capabilities are
actually useful, you know, in the
context of your outcome, and you end up
with a kitchen sink, which is not great.
It's not a great experience. This
actually happened to me recently. This
is Hux. Um, uh, I don't know. I I mean I
do know actually, but we ended up in a
place where we had an app that did all
these things. And I was like, it's so
beautiful. Okay, it does this thing. You
can chat with it. You can make podcasts.
You can read the news. It generates
images. It generates videos. I was so
excited. It was like my dream product
until it wasn't because then I started
using it every day. And I'm like, whoa,
I don't really use any of this. I just
use one thing. And we gave it to a bunch
of users. give it to several hundred
people and they also just used one thing
in the product and I was like well you
know I think in real life people only
have the bandwidth to sort of be like
this is my one thing right like I'm sure
Spotify does a lot of things but I still
use it for one thing which is to play
music I don't know what else it really
does right I'm sure like it's a huge
team it's like a bajillion dollar
industry but that's what it does and so
when we were working on Hux I'm like
whoa how crazy oh I forgot it does chat
too which is wild except I made it like
really goofy instead of Chach GPT. It's
just crazy. But I think like to look at
this product now and to see sort of like
the lack of focus in the product
direction, it's like, hey, this has a
little bit of like that demo disease,
right? Where it looks cool, but in real
life, like nobody's going to love that
thing. And so I just want to reiterate
kind of the message here, which is
clarity is what is going to give you the
energy for the job. And the job is hard,
so you're going to need lots of that.
Purpose is what keeps us focused on it
and makes sure that we know what outcome
we are marching towards. And it is the
trust in that purpose that's going to
earn us the belief, right, of our users.
And the belief is what's going to get us
to a place where we have an opportunity
to delight, right? And that delight is
going to prove potential. And the
kitchen sink is just like a checks and
balances kind of a thing. And it keeps
us honest and focused about whether or
not meeting the first four. And that's
how I bu I believe that we build
something that isn't ugly. Thank you.
[Music]