Lenny RachitskyHost of Lenny's Podcast | Author of Lenny's Newsletter

Celebrate the PM Who Says “Don’t Launch This”

20 Oct 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:41

This content was created by Lenny Rachitsky. This content was uploaded by Lenny Rachitsky. This is a YouTube video titled "Celebrate the PM Who Says “Don’t Launch This”" (created/posted 2026-10-20T10:30:13Z). The excerpt is a short, diarized conversation featuring Lenny Rachitsky and another speaker discussing signs it's time to kill a product idea and how leaders should create an environment where team members (especially PMs) can raise that concern. The other speaker gives a concrete example about an early Gemini feature that felt wrong and praises the PM who recommended not launching.

Chapters

What are signs that it's time to kill an idea?
People know when a project's not working or a relationship's not working. And so as a leader, what I try to do, say in Labs or even some of our features in Gemini, is like, how do you create an environment where people can ask those uncomfortable questions and be able to say like, hey, I don't think this is working? And yesterday, just as an example, we had a feature we were really excited about in Gemini we were going to launch, and we got some of the early data back. People went out, looked in the eyes, and it just wasn't there. And so I was so proud of the PM on the team because she was like, I don't think we should launch this. It's not good. And so I replied all, I was like, this is great. Thank you for doing this.