Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 263
Jul 25, 2023 · 20 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyAn interview with Shopify's VP of Product, Glen Coates, on how the company plans around annual CEO themes, avoids OKR-style metrics ownership, reviews work through a staged system, and structures teams around merchant…
Lenny’s Podcast116 min
Noah Weiss · Jul 23, 2023
Key learnings- Distill company-level product taste into a shared set of principles so teams can self-evaluate and founders are not the sole…
- Involve founders early for strategy, goals and anti-goals, then again at the end to taste the product, and keep iterating in…
- Run complaint storms by critiquing adjacent products' customer journeys first, which builds calibration and fresh empathy before…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 184
Jul 18, 2023 · 26 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyGuest authors Michael Kaminsky and Mike Taylor explain how marketers measure incrementality, the true sales caused by spend, using three methods: multi-touch attribution, marketing mix modeling, and conversion lift…
Lenny’s Podcast94 min
Hari Srinivasan · Jul 16, 2023
Key learnings- Anchor decisions in a single clear North Star, such as connecting people to economic opportunity, so cross-marketplace tradeoffs…
- In complex ecosystems, map second- and third-order effects of every change, since a feature can shift how members perceive and…
- Name one decision-maker per decision (RAPID-style recommender, agreer, decider, input roles) and move to a call after a few email…
Lenny’s Podcast71 min
Julia Schottenstein · Jul 13, 2023
Key learnings- Evaluate early-stage companies on four dimensions: people, market, product, and distribution, and recognize that no company will…
- Look for signs of product spark, such as users who can't stop talking about the product and want to share it with teammates and…
- Build a strong standalone offense so you have a viable alternative in every M&A conversation rather than needing to sell.
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 86
Jul 11, 2023 · 17 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyAn interview with Snowflake's Director of Product for its Developer Platform and Ecosystem, describing how the company plans, reviews, and organizes product work. It covers annual 'big boulder' planning, six-page plan…
Lenny’s Podcast70 min
Paige Costello · Jul 9, 2023
Key learnings- Plan on a rolling 12-month horizon, refreshed every six months, so the immediate half has higher confidence and the business…
- Structure planning in nested altitudes (company, pillar, area, team) with metrics at each level so every team knows the outcome…
- Use a broad-then-narrow process for each problem: choose the customer, then the problem, then the solution, and pick success…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 403
Jul 4, 2023 · 22 min
Coach Erika argues that first-round interviews exist mainly to filter candidates, so preparing efficiently matters more than endless practice. She presents a method called Minimum Viable Interview Prep (MVIP) covering…
Lenny’s Podcast94 min
Jiaona Zhang · Jul 2, 2023
Key learnings- New PMs often jump to solutions; start by understanding user problems and whether a real opportunity exists before deciding what…
- A PM has little formal authority and must lead through influence, so editing and synthesizing opportunities matters more than…
- Check unit economics early; magical thinking that a business will work at scale is a common trap, as the Airbnb Plus experience…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 98
Jun 27, 2023 · 21 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyTwo former Reddit leaders outline a four-step framework for building products with a vocal, opinionated user base: measuring trust, listening to representative voices, moving debate into private advisory councils, and…
Lenny’s Podcast93 min
Sri Batchu · Jun 25, 2023
Key learnings- Sequence B2B growth roughly as founder-led sales, first salespeople, low-cost targeted marketing like content and community, then…
- Use early investor and founder relationships as a growth channel: getting influential operators onto the cap table can drive word…
- Make every growth channel driven by technology and data, such as dedicated growth engineers automating sales workflows and…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 71
Jun 20, 2023 · 12 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyA guest post by product leader Tamara Hinckley offering a step-by-step playbook for building a parental leave coverage plan. It walks through timing the rollout with stakeholders, choosing a leave timeline, assigning…
Lenny’s Podcast98 min
Melissa Tan · Jun 18, 2023
Key learnings- Hire first-principles thinkers who are humble and collaborative, since that combination drove much of Dropbox's innovation…
- Start go-to-market and monetization planning early rather than treating growth as a layer added on top of the product later.
- Introduce a PLG motion when the product is intuitive to onboard onto and has a viral component; move toward enterprise sales once…
Lenny’s Podcast107 min
Luc Levesque · Jun 15, 2023
Key learnings- Focus relentlessly on impact over activity: measure outcomes against the north-star metric rather than hours worked or work…
- Hire the top 1% by looking for repeated 'signs of excellence' in a candidate's history, such as multiple standout achievements…
- Recruit with the whole executive team and involve the candidate's spouse or family, since changing companies is a family…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 145
Jun 13, 2023 · 22 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyFormer Palantir product leader Adam Judelson shares unconventional product lessons from his seven years at the company, including embedding engineers with customers, hiring top talent, skipping a formal sales team…
Lenny’s Podcast98 min
Nikhyl Singhal · Jun 11, 2023
Key learnings- Think about your career as a product: work backward from the end state you want, and plan several steps ahead rather than…
- Pursue a diverse set of experiences across pre-product-market-fit, scaling, inside-the-building and outside-the-building…
- Early in your career, pick a lane of expertise (domain, crafting, market, organizational, growth) and build a story of what you…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 145
Jun 6, 2023 · 27 min
“If you’re getting this post, that means my wife’s due date is very near (😮💨), or our kid was just born (🥹). To give my new family my undivided attention, I’ll be taking a month or so of parental leave. To make sure you continue to receive exceptional value from the newsletter during this period, a few months back I put out a call for guest posts. Out of 500+ pitches, I whittled it down to six extraordinary posts. Today’s post is…”
Lenny’s Podcast92 min
Jeremy Henrickson · Jun 4, 2023
Key learnings- Keep small teams with clear, narrow missions, and break large problems into pieces that small groups can own end to end to…
- Build a shared platform with a single system of record so product teams spend less energy on decisions and integrations, letting…
- Dive into the trenches yourself: leaders learn where the real challenges are only by working through the hardest details with the…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 244
Jun 2, 2023 · 15 min
Sho Kuwamoto, Figma's VP of Product, argues that Figma's success comes from putting customer needs first, a philosophy built into its culture from the early private beta. He describes how customer support became…
Lenny’s Podcast99 min
Nancy Duarte · Jun 1, 2023
Key learnings- Make your audience the hero of the story and approach every presentation with empathy, since the audience ultimately holds the…
- Position yourself as the mentor who helps the audience get unstuck, offering them a practical tool and an inner resolve for the…
- Use the 'what is / what could be / new bliss' contrast structure to build tension and longing for a future state, even in short…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 277
May 30, 2023 · 19 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyAn in-depth look at how Notion builds product, drawn from an interview with its Chief Product and Technology Officer. It covers planning cadences, a four-stage product review process, the small size of the PM team, a…
Lenny’s Podcast71 min
Andy Raskin · May 28, 2023
Key learnings- Replace the 'arrogant doctor' pitch (problem, solution, why we're better) with a story that opens by naming a shift from an old…
- Name the old game in a few concise words, such as 'transactions' or 'opinions', since compact labels make the shift easy to…
- Show that winners are already playing the new game, and frame the stakes as a clear choice between a very negative and a very…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 285
May 23, 2023 · 23 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyAn interview-based deep dive into how Ramp's product org works, centered on a culture of velocity: planning only as far out as needed, anchoring strategy to the financial model, organizing teams around business…
Lenny’s Podcast103 min
Gustav Söderström · May 21, 2023
Key learnings- Expect the internet's next shift from recommendation to generation to require rethinking products and business models, much as…
- Design UIs to match your model's real accuracy: if predictions are right only one in four or five times, show several options at…
- Treat generative AI as a distinct paradigm rather than more of the same machine learning, and ask what experience couldn't exist…
Lenny’s Podcast76 min
Scott Belsky · May 18, 2023
Key learnings- Build product sense by developing genuine empathy for the customer's problem before getting attached to a particular solution…
- Optimize the first mile of the experience: users arrive lazy, selfish, and impatient, so onboarding, orientation, and defaults…
- Re-examine onboarding for each new customer cohort, since later pragmatist users are less forgiving and need a reimagined…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 239
May 16, 2023 · 11 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny explains what investors mean by a "venture-scale" startup: a credible path to roughly $100M in annual revenue and a $1B+ valuation within about a decade. He argues most ideas, including many successful products…
Lenny’s Podcast69 min
Ayo Omojola · May 14, 2023
Key learnings- Differentiation must be both different and better in a way end users actually care about; being merely different or merely…
- Find a sharp, memorable point of difference you can state in one line; for Cash App it was instant access to money when…
- Keep a startup-within-a-company small and tightly knit with senior people who trust each other, and fight for each headcount…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 192
May 9, 2023 · 16 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky profiles how Miro builds product, drawing on an interview with its CPO Varun Parmar. The post covers Miro's cross-functional AMPED structure, its three-year vision and annual strategy process, a…
Lenny’s Podcast107 min
Jonathan Becker · May 7, 2023
Key learnings- Don't put all your marketing budget into one paid channel; treat spend like a portfolio and diversify across channels to avoid…
- Judge paid lead-gen by downstream revenue, not cost per lead; a higher-cost lead that converts to valuable customers can…
- Use a lead scoring model fed by CRM revenue data to bid more on audiences likely to become high-value customers, especially when…
Lenny’s Podcast121 min
David Singleton · May 4, 2023
Key learnings- Co-create new products with a small, carefully chosen group of early users, sharing product regularly and expanding only once…
- Engineers at Stripe are expected to act like PMs, so hiring and developing product-minded engineers can reduce the need for early…
- Use friction logging: pick a specific user persona, walk through the product end-to-end, and note every point of friction to find…