Lenny’s Podcast90 min
Lauren Ipsen · Nov 3, 2022
Key learnings- Define the outcome and 90-day mandate for a senior product hire before starting the search, rather than hiring a head of product…
- Be wary of chasing big-name executives; ask who is best for this specific role at this stage, since senior leaders may be far…
- Decide whether the role is platform, core product, or specialist (growth, monetization, design) so you don't expect one leader to…
Lenny’s Podcast84 min
Sachin Monga · Oct 30, 2022
Key learnings- Early on, act more as a facilitator than a decision maker: keep the CEO and teams aligned on problems and vision through a…
- Organize product teams around timeless customer problems (writers, readers, growth) rather than product surfaces, so structure…
- Expect any process or planning system to become obsolete as the company grows; aim to keep getting better each week, month, and…
Lenny’s Podcast68 min
Barbra Gago · Oct 27, 2022
Key learnings- Create a new category only when the scope is big enough to matter and you can see signals like emerging budget lines or buyer…
- Abandon category creation quickly if customers keep calling you by the existing category name, as Greenhouse learned with…
- A category is only real once competitors and analysts validate it, so welcome new entrants who adopt your category label as proof…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 251
Oct 25, 2022 · 14 min
Lenny Rachitsky and growth advisor Yuriy Timen ran a benchmarking survey of over 500 product teams to answer what counts as a good activation rate. The article defines activation as the share of new users who reach a…
Lenny’s Podcast87 min
Fareed Mosavat · Oct 23, 2022
Key learnings- Get better at product management by doing real work at real companies with real customers; courses, mentorship and reading only…
- Run an execute-generalize-communicate loop: ship work, extract transferable lessons such as when friction helps activation, then…
- Build sponsorship by doing excellent work and communicating it, so leaders who can open bigger opportunities notice you.
Lenny’s Podcast91 min
Adriel Frederick · Oct 20, 2022
Key learnings- Make new R&D or incubation teams feel core to the company mission and share their wins, so the rest of the organization doesn't…
- For algorithm-heavy products, decide explicitly what the algorithm owns versus what people own, and design interfaces that let…
- Treat operational control as a first-order product requirement when a marketplace needs day-to-day human adjustments like weather…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 570
Oct 18, 2022 · 7 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky explains how mission, vision, strategy, goals, roadmap, and tasks connect, working from the top down and showing where to begin. He illustrates each layer with well-known company examples and uses a…
Lenny’s Podcast78 min
Janna Bastow · Oct 16, 2022
Key learnings- Treat a roadmap as a prototype for your strategy: its value lies in the roadmapping process of sharing and testing assumptions…
- Replace timeline-based roadmaps with Now, Next, Later buckets so that not every item implies a due date, since uncertainty grows…
- Reserve firm dates for truly fixed constraints such as regulatory deadlines or seasonal rushes, and plan extra buffer and soft…
Lenny’s Podcast80 min
Adam Fishman · Oct 13, 2022
Key learnings- Use a competency model (growth execution, customer knowledge, growth strategy, communication and influence) to hire for a…
- Before hiring a growth leader, agree on what you need and where the gaps are, and use the model as a reverse interview to see…
- Give specific feedback by naming the exact competency to improve, instead of vague comments like 'be more strategic'.
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 174
Oct 11, 2022 · 9 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky expands his Racecar Growth Framework, breaking a startup's growth into a self-sustaining growth engine, kickstarts for early users, turbo boosts for temporary surges, lubricants for efficiency, mid-stage…
Lenny’s Podcast93 min
Dan Hockenmaier · Oct 9, 2022
Key learnings- A growth model is a spreadsheet formula for how your business grows; roughly half its value comes from the act of building it…
- Start with three core building blocks for a SaaS growth model: acquisition channels, retention, and monetization; marketplaces…
- Retention is often the most sensitive lever in a growth model, so small retention gains can be worth more than larger gains…
Lenny’s Podcast76 min
Kristen Berman · Oct 2, 2022
Key learnings- Pick an uncomfortably specific behavior to change rather than a vague outcome like 'engagement'; teams should align on the exact…
- Map every step required to perform the target behavior (a behavioral diagnosis) and attach the psychological barriers at each…
- Reduce logistical and cognitive barriers to make desired behaviors easier, since people default to the path of least resistance…
Lenny’s Podcast81 min
Gia Laudi · Sep 29, 2022
Key learnings- Stop treating growth as ending at acquisition; for recurring-revenue businesses, retention, expansion and post-signup activation…
- Start by identifying your best customers: those who are happy, pay well, have an urgent problem, and signed up recently enough to…
- Survey recent best customers about the trigger moment, alternatives considered, must-haves, anxieties, and desired outcomes, then…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 86
Sep 27, 2022 · 14 min
Emily Kramer, who led marketing at Asana, Carta and other companies, argues that much marketing work wastes time because teams lack alignment before work begins. She introduces GACCS (Goals, Audience, Creative…
Lenny’s Podcast79 min
Julian Shapiro · Sep 25, 2022
Key learnings- Pursue product-led acquisition by designing features where users naturally invite others, such as settling debts, sharing…
- Build user state, like reputation, audience, or social graphs that cannot transfer off-platform, so accumulated investment makes…
- Prefer evergreen topics and keep updating old writing, since Julian treats his handbooks and posts as living assets rather than…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 226
Sep 20, 2022 · 12 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny uses the Lord of the Rings, especially Frodo's journey, as a lens for how product managers can build influence without relying on formal authority. He walks through seven strategies, each illustrated with Airbnb…
Lenny’s Podcast98 min
Jason Shah · Sep 18, 2022
Key learnings- Reframe pushback as shifting direction toward shared goals: first identify what the other person actually cares about, then align…
- Use Amazon's working-backwards PR/FAQ: write the press release, customer quote, and leadership quote before building, forcing…
- Cut vague adjectives like 'great' and replace them with concrete numbers and specifics, since fewer, heavier words force sharper…
Lenny’s Podcast87 min
Adam Grenier · Sep 15, 2022
Key learnings- Before investing in an emerging channel, check three things: whether the channel's strengths match your customers' needs and…
- Don't assume a hot channel is right for you; a channel like Clubhouse may be a green light for one company and a yellow light for…
- Keep early experiments small, such as half a person's time, and cap them around a quarter, defining in advance what momentum…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 19
Sep 13, 2022 · 8 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky offers a five-point checklist for deciding when to sunset a product or feature, drawing on his Airbnb experience. The core argument is that a feature failing at least three of the criteria (low usage…
Lenny’s Podcast102 min
Emily Kramer · Sep 11, 2022
Key learnings- Think of marketing as fuel (the content, positioning and assets that add value) and engine (distribution, tracking and ops), then…
- Prioritize hiring for the business model, such as top-down sales versus product-led growth, over matching industry or audience…
- Your first marketer should ideally be a 'pie-shaped' generalist with deep expertise in one area, usually product marketing, plus…
Lenny’s Podcast66 min
Ryan J. Salva · Sep 4, 2022
Key learnings- Ring-fence a dedicated R&D team for long-horizon, uncertain bets, reserving roughly 5-10% of capacity for audacious experiments…
- Hand off research prototypes only after customer signal exists, and move researchers back to R&D based on a trained replacement…
- Let the team that owns the product day to day control its own roadmap; don't outsource innovation entirely to an R&D group.
Lenny’s Podcast74 min
Yuriy Timen · Sep 1, 2022
Key learnings- Give every channel a real test before judging it; many teams wrongly conclude YouTube or other tactics don't work because they…
- Virality works best when the product has inherent network effects, where utility grows with more users, rather than trying to…
- Treat SEO as a 3-month time-boxed experiment, favoring angles with a unique editorial, programmatic, or data advantage, and buy a…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 172
Aug 30, 2022 · 18 min
Olga Berezovsky, guest-writing for Lenny Rachitsky, argues that cohort retention is widely misunderstood and costly to get wrong, and offers a practical guide to measuring it. She recommends defining "active" by the…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 72
Aug 23, 2022 · 10 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny answers a reader's question about growth levers beyond his consumer growth series. He recaps the Racecar Growth Framework (kickstarts, growth engines, lubricants, turbo boosts), then introduces two mid-stage…
Lenny’s Podcast68 min
Marty Cagan · Aug 21, 2022
Key learnings- Empowered product teams are handed problems to solve with measurable outcomes, not prioritized feature lists to ship; celebrate…
- Product managers are equally responsible for the 'how' - ensuring a solution is valuable, usable, feasible, and viable - not just…
- Limit problem validation time when the founder already understands the problem; spend most effort on solution discovery through…
Lenny’s Podcast106 min
Arielle Jackson · Aug 18, 2022
Key learnings- Start with product positioning before anything else, since positioning drives most downstream marketing decisions; Arielle says…
- Run a structured naming process: write a naming brief, brainstorm hundreds of rough ideas, then screen candidates against…
- Prefer suggestive or evocative names that hint at what the company does, but accept that empty-vessel names like Eero can work if…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 129
Aug 16, 2022 · 24 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyStep six of Lenny Rachitsky's consumer-business series explains how products grow through a small set of engines: virality, SEO, and paid growth, plus sales and supply-driven demand for marketplaces. It argues founders…
Lenny’s Podcast128 min
Shishir Mehrotra · Aug 14, 2022
Key learnings- Map your product's growth as loops rather than linear funnels, and draw a diagram of how users bring in other users; Shishir says…
- Remove friction from the moment users share, as Coda did by charging only for document makers, not for people they share with.
- Treat publishing as a discovery channel: users who publish something useful for their niche can expose the product to new…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 98
Aug 9, 2022 · 43 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyPart five of a six-part series on building a consumer business, focused on retention and finding product-market fit. The post argues PMF is a spectrum of confidence, signaled by flattening retention curves, organic…
Lenny’s Podcast103 min
Ryan Hoover · Aug 7, 2022
Key learnings- Before launching on Product Hunt or elsewhere, define the goal first: customer acquisition, recruiting, fundraising, feedback…
- Write launch taglines and descriptions the way customers describe your product to friends, not in polished PR language, since…
- Use the product gallery as a visual story, such as a before-and-after or an evolution, since visitors look at visuals first on…