Lenny Rachitsky

This Week #10: Keeping designers and engineers excited about metrics + Transitioning from DS to PM 🕺

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…

This Week #9: Breaking into growth, leading with influence, and (not) stepping on toes 🦶

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…

What They'd Do Differently 🔮 Kickstarting and Scaling a Marketplace Business

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…

Maintaining Quality 🏅 Phase 2 of Kickstarting and Scaling a Marketplace Business

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…

Accelerating Growth at Scale 🔥 Phase 2 of Kickstarting and Scaling a Marketplace Business

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…

How To Know If You're Supply or Demand Constrained 🤹‍♂️ - Phase 2 of Kickstarting and Scaling a Marketplace Business

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…

How to Kickstart and Scale a Marketplace Business – Part 4: Cracking the Chicken-and-Egg Problem 🐣 - Growing Initial Demand (plus a Bonus!)

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…

How to Kickstart and Scale a Marketplace Business – Part 3: Cracking the Chicken-and-Egg Problem 🐣 - Growing Initial Supply

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…

How to Kickstart and Scale a Marketplace Business – Part 2: Cracking the Chicken-and-Egg Problem 🐣 - Supply vs. Demand

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…

How to kickstart and scale a marketplace business

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…

This Week #8: Splitting equity with late-joining co-founders, favorite roadmap templates, and small changes that improve your org

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…

This Week #7: Effectively communicating about a failure to execs, managing founder expectations, and hiring a Director of PM

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…

This Week #6: Cultivating good relationships with distributed co-workers, building trust to accelerate growth, and leveling up as a PM when you have extra time

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…

This Week #5: Overcoming impostor syndrome, introducing growth to an org, and how to partner with your data scientist

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…

This Week #4: Motivating engineers to hit deadlines, PM career ladders, and aligning with execs

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…

This Week #3: Finding product/market fit, interviewing for a Director of PM role, and structuring discussions with senior leaders

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…

The Secret to a Great Planning Process — Lessons from Airbnb and Eventbrite

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…

This Week #2: Tackling the chicken-and-egg problem, building a growth team from scratch, and addressing overlap with PM peers 🤔

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…

This Week #1: Must reads on growth, what PMs should focus on when joining a new team, and the value of an MBA

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…

This Week #0: Advice on growth, product, and leadership

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…

The Power of Performance Reviews: Use This System to Become a Better Manager 🤝

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…

28 Ways to Grow Supply in a Marketplace 📈

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…

What Buddhism Taught Me About Product Management

Lenny Rachitsky argues that three core Buddhist teachings (dukkha, impermanence, and non-self) map well onto product management work. He explains that dissatisfaction is a built-in feature of human psychology, so PMs…

Where Great Product Roadmap Ideas Come From

Lenny Rachitsky compiles a list of fifteen practical sources for product roadmap ideas, drawn partly from community suggestions. The core argument is that strong ideas come from direct customer contact, observing…

How to get into product management

Lenny Rachitsky, who moved from engineering into product at Airbnb, lays out how to decide whether product management suits you, which of four common entry paths to pursue, and which seven core skills to build. He…

A Three-Step Framework For Solving Problems 👌

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)…

What Seven Years at Airbnb Taught Me About Building a Business

Lenny Rachitsky reflects on seven years at Airbnb, from early engineer to PM, distilling lessons on building a company. He argues that strong culture and values create competitive advantage in hiring, speed, and…

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