By Lenny Rachitsky · lennysnewsletter.com · @lennysan on X · YouTube · LinkedIn
Lenny Rachitsky's year-end roundup revisits his 250-plus past newsletter posts and podcast episodes, selecting the most popular ones and sorting them into problem-based categories such as building product, go-to-market, growth, metrics, product-market fit, career, hiring, leadership, and pricing. The collection is framed as a single entry point for product builders, growth leaders, and founders looking for practical answers. Its value lies less in new argument than in serving as an index to a large body of advice. Readers who want a curated map of foundational PM and growth material will find it useful as a starting point.
01Key takeaways
- Work backward from mission to vision, strategy, goals, roadmap, and tasks so daily work stays tied to purpose.
- Pick a north-star metric and benchmark retention, churn, and activation against known good ranges for your business model.
- Find product-market fit by checking whether users would be upset if the product disappeared, and expect the process to take time.
- Choose a wedge and a distribution advantage before scaling go-to-market spend.
- Use the curated categories as a problem-first index, pulling the piece that matches your current challenge.
02Key sections
- Growth and milestones
- The post opens by noting the newsletter's subscriber growth and the podcast's rise in rankings, and thanks readers for their support.
- Building product and GTM
- Curated links cover product management templates, product sense, roadmap prioritization, strategy, and launch tactics for consumer, marketplace, and B2B businesses.
- Growth, metrics and benchmarks
- Sections address retention, virality, referrals, SEO, and benchmark questions such as good churn, activation rate, and north-star metrics.
- Career, hiring and leadership
- Resources cover becoming a PM, interviewing and hiring product people, managing up, and founder lessons on fundraising, community, and performance reviews.
- Pricing and sales
- The final buckets point to material on SaaS and freemium pricing, founder-led sales, and hitting revenue targets during a recession.
03From the post
“What a year. The newsletter crossed 300,000 subscribers (from 90K one year ago), the podcast became a top 10 technology podcast, and the subscriber Slack community continues to thrive. I never imagined reaching this scale, and none of this would be possible without you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank you for reading, for listening, and for subscribing. There’s so much more to come. To close out the year, like I did last year, I revisited all of my past posts (over 250 of them!), picked out the cream of the crop, and categorized them into handy “What problem do I need help with?” buckets, which you’ll find below. This post is now the single best way to find my most popular stuff, across both the newsletter and podcast. My long-term vision with the newsletter and podcast is to have an in-depth answer to every question product builders, growth leaders, and founders have. Likely impossible, but let’s try! Enjoy, and see you in 2023 🥂 The Best of Lenny’s Newsletter Building product 1. Mission → Vision →…”
04Frameworks mentioned
Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.