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Manik Gupta has led two of the most successful consumer products in history\u2014Google Maps, where he was Director of product for the Maps team, and Uber, where he was CPO. After leaving Uber, he spent some time working on a product to help people avoid getting COVID called CVKey, and most recently he took on a role at Microsoft as Corporate Vice President leading many of their consumer efforts.

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Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:

\u2022 Mixpanel: https://mixpanel.com/startups

\u2022 Coda: http://coda.io/lenny

\u2022 Unit: https://unit.co/lenny

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In this episode, we cover:

[3:55] Patterns for career success

[7:19] Why it\u2019s valuable to be optimistic about technology

[13:54] Challenges and mistakes through Manik\u2019s career

[17:28] How you learn the most about yourself through challenges

[20:25] What Manik\u2019s learned about building successful consumer apps

[26:18] The importance of company-product fit

[30:02] \u201cThe consumer stack\u201d\u2014what your company needs to have in place to build a successful consumer product

[36:22] The path from PM to CPO

[39:19] Evolution of CPO role

[44:40] What leads to promotions in a PM career

[47:58] What creates inflections in one\u2019s PM career

[52:05] How PMs shoot themselves in the foot

[55:05] What it\u2019s like to work at Google vs. Uber vs. Microsoft

[1:01:35] What he wished he built into Google Maps

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Where to find Manik:

\u2022 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manikg/

\u2022 Twitter: https://twitter.com/manikgupta