Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 100
Mar 3, 2020 · 6 min
“Hello and welcome to another edition of my weekly newsletter! My name is Lenny, and each week I tackle reader questions about building product, driving growth, working with humans, and anything else that’s stressing you out at the office. Send me your questions (just reply to this email or DM me) and in return I’ll humbly share actionable free real-talk advice. 🤝 Q: I was wondering if you had any advice for building referral programs…”
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 14
Feb 25, 2020 · 4 min
Lenny Rachitsky answers a SaaS founder's question about when a small startup should raise money and start hiring. His core guideline is to wait until product/market fit is found, since hiring before then slows a company…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 12
Feb 18, 2020 · 4 min
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader who just sold their startup and is moving into a product manager role without formal PM training. Drawing on his own experience after Localmind was acquired by Airbnb, he admits he was a…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 14
Feb 11, 2020 · 4 min
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader question about how Airbnb balanced outcome-oriented thinking with design and engineering requirements that don't directly drive a target metric. He argues that outcome-oriented…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 15
Feb 4, 2020 · 6 min
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader's question about taking a marketplace business international, drawing on advice from two former Airbnb leaders who built its European business. The piece argues that expansion…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 193
Jan 28, 2020 · 8 min
Lenny Rachitsky compiles the most concrete and actionable definitions of product-market fit (PMF) from leading investors, founders, and operators, organized into signals before a product exists and signals after launch…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 13
Jan 21, 2020 · 8 min
This edition of Lenny Rachitsky's newsletter answers two reader questions. First, with input from Jackie Bavaro, it argues that early-career PMs should prioritize shipping wins, learning best practices, building…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 14
Jan 14, 2020 · 9 min
Lenny Rachitsky's newsletter answers two reader questions. The first, with guest Lex Roman, argues that a PM can keep designers and engineers motivated around metrics by involving them in the whole measurement cycle…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 25
Jan 7, 2020 · 11 min
This issue of Lenny Rachitsky's newsletter answers three reader questions about career and organizational challenges in product work. The first, drawing on growth leader Brian Balfour, explains how to break into a…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 100
Dec 19, 2019 · 12 min
Lenny Rachitsky closes his eight-part marketplace growth series by asking founders and operators what they would do differently. The answers cluster around a few recurring regrets: spreading effort too thin instead of…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 45
Dec 17, 2019 · 13 min
This post, part three of a marketplace series, lays out ten strategies that leaders at large marketplaces such as Airbnb, Uber, DoorDash, Etsy and Lyft use to protect service quality as they scale. The most common…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 28
Dec 13, 2019 · 8 min
This post, the second part of a marketplace growth series, examines which growth levers the largest marketplaces rely on once they move past early experimentation. Drawing on interviews with leaders from roughly…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 85
Dec 10, 2019 · 9 min
This post is Part 1 of a Phase 2 series on scaling marketplaces, asking how a company can tell whether it is supply-constrained or demand-constrained once it has product-market fit. The author argues the answer is…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 287
Dec 3, 2019 · 22 min
This is Part 4 of Lenny Rachitsky's marketplace series, focused on driving initial demand after supply is underway. It argues that the timing of investing in demand depends on product-market fit, where growth comes…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 172
Nov 25, 2019 · 13 min
This third installment of a marketplace growth series examines how leading marketplaces bootstrapped their initial supply, which is the side that most marketplaces remain constrained on. Drawing on interviews with…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 152
Nov 22, 2019 · 5 min
This second installment of a marketplace growth series tackles the chicken-and-egg problem: once a marketplace is constrained by geography or category, founders must decide whether to concentrate resources on supply or…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 434
Nov 20, 2019 · 11 min
This is the first part of a multi-post playbook by Lenny Rachitsky, drawn from interviews with people who built marketplaces like Airbnb, DoorDash, Uber, Etsy and Thumbtack. The core argument is that the chicken-and-egg…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 13
Nov 12, 2019 · 9 min
This issue of Lenny Rachitsky's newsletter covers three reader questions. The first asks how a bootstrapped founder should offer a late-joining CTO equity without deterring investors; guest Hunter Walk advises common…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 75
Oct 29, 2019 · 10 min
This weekly Q&A from Lenny Rachitsky covers three reader questions: how to communicate a failed MVP to leadership, how a product manager can persuade a founder to change a core idea under board pressure, and what to…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 8
Oct 22, 2019 · 10 min
This weekly newsletter answers three reader questions on product work. A guest contributor, Hiten Shah, argues that remote teams suffer from miscommunication and that clarity, written documentation, screenshare-based…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 15
Oct 15, 2019 · 14 min
This issue of Lenny Rachitsky's newsletter answers three reader questions. The first addresses impostor syndrome in product management, with a guest contribution from executive coach Kate Hosie reframing it through…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 21
Oct 8, 2019 · 11 min
Lenny Rachitsky's early newsletter answers three reader questions: how to motivate engineers to hit arbitrary deadlines, where to find real PM career ladders, and how to get executives to accept more actionable customer…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 16
Oct 1, 2019 · 8 min
Lenny Rachitsky's weekly Q&A newsletter tackles three practical questions: how a startup founder can tell they are approaching product/market fit, what matters most when interviewing for a Director of PM role, and…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 22
Sep 26, 2019 · 3 min
Lenny Rachitsky and Nels Gilbreth argue that annual and quarterly planning is painful for most organizations because it asks many people to imagine futures, agree on one, and plan a path to it. Drawing on dozens of…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 29
Sep 24, 2019 · 7 min
This edition of Lenny Rachitsky's Q&A newsletter answers three reader questions about early-stage product and team building. It lays out five tactics for solving the marketplace cold-start problem, mostly centered on…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 92
Sep 17, 2019 · 6 min
Lenny Rachitsky's first weekly Q&A newsletter answers three reader questions: how to learn growth as a PM moving into a growth role, what a new PM should do in their first 90 days to earn trust, and whether an MBA is…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 39
Sep 12, 2019 · 4 min
Lenny Rachitsky relaunches his dormant newsletter as an advice column on growth, product, and leadership, built from reader questions he previously answered privately or on Twitter. The first installment answers three…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 20
Jul 18, 2019 · 6 min
Lenny Rachitsky argues that performance reviews are a secret weapon of strong managers: done well, they improve performance, align expectations, and accelerate a report's career; done poorly, they drive people out. He…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 36
Jun 26, 2019 · 30 min
Lenny Rachitsky distills roughly seven years of marketplace supply-growth lessons from Airbnb into a catalogue of tactics and strategies, including the value proposition, referral programs, direct sales, piggy-backing…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 123
Jun 14, 2019 · 13 min
Lenny Rachitsky recounts a failed Airbnb 'social travel' launch, arguing that the core mistake was misunderstanding the real problem (travelers want high-quality non-touristy things to do, not to meet other travelers)…