We built and launched a viral AI product in 2 months (at Google!). Here's how:

Our little NotebookLM team has had a crazy few months and is proving that small, nimble teams not only exist within Google, but can move fast and have significant impact. Our newest feature “Audio Overviews” has taken over the internet the past few days. The team has been sprinting - we went from idea to prototype in weeks, then launched publicly in under 2 months.  It’s not perfect (yet!), but that’s the point. Here are a few takeaways:  1. It's about building products *with* our users, not just *for* them. We’re not waiting to launch, we’re shipping early and iterating. Tech is evolving faster than users can possibly know what they want. We're often anticipating needs for V1 then working alongside them to improve. Example: Very quickly we saw a massive user desire for in-line citations so our team quickly pivoted to build and launch. (Join our discord!)

2. Built-in not bolted-on: We’re building net-new, AI native products. This isn’t just AI for the sake of “AI”, we’re working to bridge the gap between state-of-the-art research and human problems. Audio Overviews are great because they sound amazing, yes -- but useful because they are (1) source grounded and (2) an easy one-click way to study and digest your own information. 

 3. Meetings are spent building, not just talking about building. We’re collaborating, deeply. I am the only UX designer on the team so we have to make every moment count. @raiza_abubakar, @stevenbjohnson and I are constantly strategizing and iterating together.  NotebookLM represents a new era of product development within Labs at Google. We're putting user feedback and community engagement at the heart of everything we do. We’re building quickly and have a lot more coming soon.. The audio below is made with the NotebookLM Audio Overview feature using only my LinkedIn post! If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend it. We want to make it better for you! It’s been awesome to see so much investigation into the product by @karpathy and @emollick.