Lenny’s Podcast102 min
Deb Liu · Aug 4, 2022
Key learnings- Treat your career like a product: write down what success looks like in five years, the milestones and skills needed, and measure…
- Keep balancing learning and impact; the expert you are today will be outpaced by someone still actively learning from the best…
- Treat setbacks as stepping stones; people who recover from hard feedback and failed products often become the strongest leaders.
Lenny’s Podcast74 min
Crystal W · Jul 31, 2022
Key learnings- Run Wizard of Oz style experiments before building: use WhatsApp groups, screenshots, or manual processes to validate demand…
- Experiments are worth running even with around 30 users; the trends stay similar, and precision improves with more data, while…
- Define retention concretely as cohort retention; for a free weekly product, expect roughly 60% of the prior week's users to…
Lenny’s Podcast112 min
Melissa Perri · Jul 28, 2022
Key learnings- The product owner role came from Scrum as a way to help developers prioritize work, not from product management, so it often…
- Frameworks like SAFe are heavily marketed and often adopted rigidly; Perri has seen most teams that found success end up ripping…
- Teams that already talk to customers and iterate quickly may not need a framework at all; the principle of shipping value and…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 255
Jul 26, 2022 · 54 min
“Welcome to part four (maybe my favorite!) of our six-part series on kickstarting and scaling a consumer business. At this point, you have your startup idea, a good sense of your super-specific who, and a hook. In this post, we bring it all together to go find your first 1,000 users. If you’re just joining us, here’s where we are at, and what’s ahead: - Step 1: INSIGHT: Come up with your idea - Step 2: AUDIENCE: Identify your…”
Lenny’s Podcast93 min
Ken Norton · Jul 24, 2022
Key learnings- Executive coaching is a partnership where the client defines success; the coach brings listening, curiosity, and challenge rather…
- Advice often delivers a short-lived boost, like cotton candy; lasting growth usually requires confronting the underlying problem…
- Leadership shifts are largely internal: reframing your operating system matters as much as learning new frameworks once you reach…
Lenny’s Podcast71 min
Casey Winters · Jul 21, 2022
Key learnings- Escalate problems to leadership early so they can help change circumstances, rather than silently absorbing them; leaders can't…
- Structure upward communication to start at the last point the audience already agrees with, not at the chapter-six detail or with…
- Prepare for important meetings by role-playing each attendee and listing every possible question, ensuring you have the data to…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 97
Jul 19, 2022 · 11 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyPart three of Lenny Rachitsky's consumer-business series argues that busy audiences ignore ordinary products, so founders need a remarkable 'hook.' It offers four strategies for finding one: spotlighting what's unique…
Lenny’s Podcast88 min
Nickey Skarstad · Jul 18, 2022
Key learnings- Pick a quality metric, such as review rate or first sale within a set window, as a balancing top-line goal alongside growth so…
- Dogfood your own product regularly; Skarstad notes that using the product yourself reveals quality problems immediately and…
- Involve your team in strategy-setting rather than writing it alone, but recognize that one clear leader should own the final…
Lenny’s Podcast86 min
Manik Gupta · Jul 14, 2022
Key learnings- Surround yourself with exceptional people early in your career and stick with them over the long term, since shared trust built…
- Consumer products are harder than they look because builders are not typical users; you cannot force adoption, so virality and…
- Build consumer products for a global audience from day one, localizing language, pricing, and legal requirements while avoiding…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 128
Jul 12, 2022 · 16 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyThis post, step two of a six-part series on launching consumer businesses, argues that early growth depends on picking an almost comically narrow 'super-specific who' as the first target audience. It draws on examples…
Lenny’s Podcast72 min
Merci Grace · Jul 11, 2022
Key learnings- Open pitches and presentations with the most surprising insight or action rather than market background, since the goal is to…
- Remember that a product's onboarding should be designed from first contact, and it should teach users by using the product itself…
- Regularly watch real users go through signup and onboarding; conversion numbers hide the emotional and confusion details that…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 330
Jul 5, 2022 · 64 min
Lenny Rachitsky opens a six-part playbook for launching and scaling a consumer business, with this first installment focused on where startup ideas come from. Drawing on research into 50 successful consumer companies…
Lenny’s Podcast91 min
Sanchan Saxena · Jul 5, 2022
Key learnings- Careers rarely follow a plan; Sanchan advises taking little bets, learning fast, and pivoting rather than over-planning a…
- Choose a role that maximizes how fast you learn product management, and match the startup versus big-company choice to whether…
- During a crisis, Airbnb replaced fixed teams with one company-wide team and two-week planning cycles, reacting to fast-changing…
Lenny’s Podcast67 min
Teresa Torres · Jun 30, 2022
Key learnings- Use the opportunity solution tree: put a measurable outcome at the root, map opportunities as customer needs and pain points…
- Keep opportunities framed in the problem space rather than as disguised solutions; Torres notes most people mistakenly write…
- Collect rich, behavior-based stories in interviews by asking about the last specific instance (e.g., 'tell me about the last…
Lenny’s Podcast68 min
Brandon Chu · Jun 27, 2022
Key learnings- Treat domain expertise as table stakes; to reach the highest levels, lean into founder skills like storytelling, motivating…
- Think of the PM role as helping teams ship the right thing at the right time in the right way, acting as a servant leader rather…
- Set annual directional plans but expect them to change; avoid sunk-cost fallacy and be willing to throw away work when the world…
Lenny’s Podcast115 min
Elena Verna 3.0 · Jun 23, 2022
Key learnings- Founders should drive the first stage of growth themselves; hire a growth leader only after product-market fit, strong retention…
- A growth team cannot fix a declining core product or go-to-market; stabilize the core issues first before adding growth resources.
- Homepage and brand redesigns rarely lift acquisition immediately; plan for three to six months of post-launch optimization or…
Lenny’s Podcast88 min
Gibson Biddle · Jun 20, 2022
Key learnings- Frame product strategy as a set of testable hypotheses about how to delight customers in hard-to-copy, margin-enhancing ways, and…
- Use A/B tests to check what customers say they want; Gibson's new-release test showed that faster delivery barely moved…
- Estimate the value of a feature by multiplying affected customers by lifetime value and a word-of-mouth factor, then weigh it…
Lenny’s Podcast78 min
Jackie Bavaro · Jun 16, 2022
Key learnings- Ask your manager directly how to prepare for a future promotion, framing the goal in the future so the manager becomes an ally…
- Treat a strategy as three parts: a vision, a strategic framework with pillars and bets, and a backward-working roadmap used as a…
- A roadmap in strategy is a sanity check, not a commitment; if it can't reach the vision in time, that signals bigger bets or more…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 41
Jun 14, 2022 · 15 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky compiles lessons from founders and early growth leaders at marketplaces like Lyft, Thumbtack, Rover, and Udemy on how to earn trust between strangers. The core argument is that trust is built through a…
Lenny’s Podcast87 min
Gokul Rajaram · Jun 13, 2022
Key learnings- Do core work well but stay curious about other teams; serendipity and relationships built by helping people often create the next…
- When choosing a company, prioritize a founder who authentically lives the mission, a problem you feel energy for, and a company…
- Early-stage teams should plan weekly, then add quarterly and annual layers as they grow; keep tooling simple like a spreadsheet…
Lenny’s Podcast85 min
April Dunford · Jun 9, 2022
Key learnings- Weak positioning shows up across the funnel: confused prospects, sluggish middle-of-pipeline deals, and churn after the sale, so…
- Start positioning by identifying competitive alternatives, including the status quo, since roughly 40% of B2B deals are lost to…
- Turn a list of differentiated capabilities into customer value, then group them into two or three value themes that only you can…
Lenny’s Podcast97 min
Julie Zhuo · Jun 7, 2022
Key learnings- Growth often comes from being in uncomfortable, unfamiliar situations; Julie notes that feeling like an imposter tends to…
- Seek environments that are scaling, since growing companies create more opportunities to volunteer for new responsibilities and…
- Share your struggles openly with peers, mentors, and reports; vulnerability builds deeper connections and lets others help you…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 98
May 24, 2022 · 4 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky shares high-level structures from 20+ large companies' product management career ladders, including titles by level, evaluated competencies, and where IC and manager tracks split. He argues career…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 93
May 17, 2022 · 20 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny draws on interviews with founders and product leaders at Noom, Duolingo, Grammarly, Calm, Spotify, Future, Flo and others to explain what helps consumer subscription apps last. The core argument is that winners…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 148
May 10, 2022 · 56 min
Todd Jackson, a seed-stage investor at First Round Capital, interviewed founders of eight companies (Vanta, Flexport, Cocoon, Good Dog, Snackpass, Rec Room, LaunchDarkly, Pinwheel) about how they chose and validated…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 84
Apr 26, 2022 · 12 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky surveys about two dozen venture investors on what growth rates count as good or great at each stage of a business. The post argues that early-stage investors weigh time-to-$1M ARR, retention, and…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 123
Apr 19, 2022 · 5 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky lays out a three-part approach to preparing for product manager interviews: research the product, company and interview process; practice with real people through mock interviews and coaching; and study…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 146
Apr 12, 2022 · 26 min
Andy Johns, a growth leader who stepped away from a presidency at Wealthfront after a heart scare, argues that high achievers need a deliberate way to recognize and respect their personal limits. He introduces a…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 80
Mar 29, 2022 · 11 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky lays out the four metrics he considers most important for an early marketplace: fill rate, bookings growth, supply growth, and GMV growth. He explains why each matters, shares practitioner perspectives…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 101
Mar 22, 2022 · 19 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky lays out a practical playbook for interviewing product managers: a multi-stage funnel with screens, a full-day loop, and panel debriefs. He covers which skills to test, sample questions, how to design…