How Lenny & Friends Summit pulled off an entire conference with Coda

Lenny Rachitsky's first-ever conference needed a strong, nimble partner. It got one in Coda.

Ben Lee

Solutions Architect at Coda

How Lenny & Friends Summit pulled off an entire conference with Coda

By Ben Lee

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Case studies > Lenny & Friends Summit · 5 min read
I've been in the event business for years, and I've never seen anything like this. I definitely want to buy this app for my future projects.
Poya Osgouei
CEO of Modern GTM
That’s Poya Osgouei, a seasoned event organizer, expressing his excitement at the event “app” created for the inaugural Lenny & Friends Summit (L&FS), writer/podcaster Lenny Rachitsky’s conference for product leaders. Except it wasn’t an app. It was a Coda doc. And that’s just the part the public saw. Lenny had partnered with the all-in-one workspace company to be the fuel behind the summit, which meant the entire coordination and outreach program for L&FS was also run entirely on Coda. But while the event turned out to be a huge success, fostering tons of learning and in-person connections, there were no guarantees it was going to end up that way with so many firsts in play.

The problem: A new frontier for everyone.

 While both sides were excited to partner on the summit, the reality was neither Coda nor Lenny had actually run a conference of this magnitude and complexity before—let alone put one together in a few months with a scrappy budget. So even if they’d wanted to spend loads of time and cash going the more traditional events app route, the constraints where forcing them in another direction. Lenny, a seasoned product leader himself who’d spent time at companies like Airbnb, was initially hesitant about hosting a conference, to say nothing of one at this scale. The fact that the over 1,000 attendees would be top product leaders from around the world and coming from companies like OpenAI, Netflix, Anthropic, and Figma, might’ve helped in increasing the stakes. And on Codan side, the trio of Mustafa Khan (Sr. Event Planner), Ben Lee, and Rachel Ding (Solutions Architects), knew the power of Coda better than anyone, but when you’re tasked with creating not only the official “app” for attendees, but an entire back end system capable of ingesting/consolidating details from thousands of applicants and creating a summit design hub to manage all the creative? You can imagine some nerves were tingling.
We were confident in the power of Coda, but with so many unknowns it definitely made for a unique situation.
Rachel Ding
Solutions Architect at Coda
And yet, the team would discover that a challenge for Coda is just another opportunity to show off it’s immense flexibility.

The solution: The endlessly flexible Coda doc.

 The team always intended for Coda to play a big role in the summit, but by the end of the process, it was fair to say the platform had become the heartbeat and the through-line of the entire conference.

Managing the deluge.

 Because of Lenny’s vast network, the interest from potential attendees was incredibly strong, but Ben was able to devise a system in which all the relevant data from an individual’s application was organized neatly into a Coda doc where Mustafa was then able to quickly and easily see all relevant details.
Instead of having to scroll through six different columns and spend time navigating a large document, it was all customized here. It was actually pretty amazing.
Mustafa Khan
Senior Event Planner at Coda
From there, Mustafa was able to seamlessly send customized emails to thousands of applicants from his personal account thanks to the Gmail Coda Pack, which meant all the data was already populated in each new email. Mustafa explaining again, “There were thousand plus attendees. And every single email came from my inbox which made it feel very personal.” This auto data population also made it possible for the Coda team to easily setup up pre-conference dinners days before the event. Right from the doc they could see the necessary information—who was in which city, their industry, their experience level—and invite relevant guests to maximize everyone’s in-person connections.

Nailing our forte.

 One piece were Coda was always going to shine was the internal hub where all the creative was tasked, reviewed and approved. Stakeholders from every part of the process—Codan designers and project managers, event agency producers, as well as internal leadership who just needed a quick check-in—had one central place where they could do their work or see what work was happening. Everyone needed to be in sync for things to settle into place on time, but luckily, keeping alignment is one Coda’s specialties.

The killer “app.”

 While there were many parts to the whole, it’s hard to argue that the real star was the event “app,” a truly dynamic document that provided attendees, speakers, and roundtable leaders with everything they needed in one place—no downloading required (just a few taps to login to Coda).
With no coding involved, Ben and Rachel built a document that had the power of an app, but the ease of a webpage. Attendees could see all the necessary conference information in a few finger swipes: speakers had their unique info secured in one spot, roundtable leaders had their own pages to add topics, and the sign-ups between speaker schedules and roundtables were linked such that conference goers would know exactly what they’d potentially miss, and when.

Impressive feedback.

 The day was filled with positive moments thanks to Coda—like when a roundtable leader, rushing to her session with her arms full of gear, was approached by a thoughtful Codan offering help. She simply smiled and said, “Nope! I’m all good. The Coda app has everything right there for me.” But some of the biggest praise of the day may have come from the speakers, who hovered over their screens backstage in the green room trading “wows” at what had been done with just a “simple” doc. As for the summit goers, the most beloved aspect might’ve been the networking page. Numerous attendees traveled long distances, with many coming from outside of the US. And time and time again in interviews they cited the connections as one of the major highlights of the conference. But since time was limited there was only so much in person interacting they could do. This is where a profile experience stepped in to extend it beyond the single day. Everyone was able to opt-in to a "contact me” option. Of the 1,100 people at the summit 82% added their information—which not only spoke to this desire to connect, but the ease of the experience.

The Outcome

 The conference’s successes truly highlighted Coda’s ability to adapt and excel in an entirely new use case. After everything was finished, Mustafa reflected on the experience, "We had confidence in Coda’s capabilities, but seeing it come to life at this scale was inspiring." For Lenny, the experience reinforced the platform’s potential. "I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome," he shared. "Coda helped make everything go so much more smoothly than I could have imagined, and it’s hard to imagine running a conference without this now." While Coda wasn’t initially designed for this situation, the outcome affirms its identity as the world’s most flexible digital workspace. Whether managing product launches or hosting conferences, Coda continues to prove its near limitless potential.

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