Meta’s Muse: How we launched the most successful consumer product this year | Mona Sarantakos

Muse is the #1 app in the App Store and arguably the fastest-growing AI consumer product of all time. Mona Sarantakos has led product on it since day one. She’s VP of Product at Meta Superintelligence Labs and a 10-year Meta veteran with over 20 years of experience as a PM. This is her first podcast interview. *We discuss:* 1. How a weekend with OpenClaw on a Raspberry Pi turned into Muse 2. Why Muse waited seven months to launch, despite getting started before most of its competitors 3. How Nat Friedman, Alex Wang, and Mark Zuckerberg each left their imprint on the product 4. How the team uses “agent swarms” to surface user insights at scale 5. The use case nobody on the team predicted 6. How Jolly, a placeholder avatar, became an icon 7. The two levers that actually move activation for an AI agent 8. The #1 thing Mona looks for in PMs today *Brought to you by:* WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more: https://workos.com/lenny DX—Engineering intelligence for the AI era: https://getdx.com/?utm_source=lenny&utm_medium=sponsorship&utm_campaign=q42026 *Episode transcript:* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/metas-muse-how-we-launched-the-most *Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts:* https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0 *Highlights:* https://lennyspodcast.com/mostreplayedmoments *Where to find Mona Sarantakos:* • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mona-sarantakos-a85873 • Threads: https://www.threads.com/@monachaudhuri *Where to find Lenny:* • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ *In this episode, we cover:* (00:00) Teaser (01:24) Introduction and Mona’s background (02:14) A weekend with an early agentic AI (09:08) The seven-month launch timeline (14:07) "The claw is the law" (15:53) Nat, Alex Wang, Zuckerberg, and how leadership shaped Muse (23:37) The Jolly origin story (29:53) Priority use cases and the shopping surprise (35:03) Agentic commerce and how shopping works (38:03) Agent swarms and synthetic data (42:48) Evals: structure, hierarchy, and who writes them (46:37) Activation and word of mouth (51:09) The design bets that defined Muse (57:04) Prototyping culture and the two Muses that fought (01:01:54) How the PM role has changed (01:09:05) Muse's first prototype (01:10:37) The board meeting prototype that almost didn’t work (01:12:00) Team size, closeness, and culture (01:20:55) What comes next: ambient agents and financial betterment *Referenced:* • Muse: https://muse.ai • Introducing Muse Spark: MSL’s First Model, Purpose-Built to Prioritize People: https://about.fb.com/news/2026/04/introducing-muse-spark-meta-superintelligence-labs • Nat Friedman’s website: https://nat.org • OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai • From skeptic to true believer: How OpenClaw changed my life | Claire Vo: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-openclaw-changed-my-life-claire-vo • Personal Superintelligence: https://www.meta.com/superintelligence • The Future is for Everyone: https://www.meta.com/thefutureisforeveryone • Grok Bot: https://x.ai/bot • How we built Grok Bot in a month | Roman Ugarte (SpaceXAI): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-we-built-grok-bot-in-a-month • Claude Duet: https://claude.com/product/claude-duet • Dots: https://openai.com/index/introducing-dots • Alex Wang on X: https://x.com/alexandr_wang • Alex Cornell’s website: https://www.alexcornell.com • How I AI: How Meta designed Muse with Alex Cornell: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-i-ai-how-meta-designed-muse-with • Christine Awad on X: https://x.com/christinesed • Linear’s secret to building beloved B2B products | Nan Yu: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/linears-secret-to-building-beloved-b2b-products-nan-yu _Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com._ Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.