Lenny’s Podcast72 min
EOY Review · Dec 29, 2022
Key learnings- Start positioning by identifying competitive alternatives, including the status quo, since many B2B deals are lost to 'no…
- Map each product capability to the customer value it enables, then group these into two or three differentiated value themes…
- Treat metrics as insights only when they explain why a behavior happens and change what you do; otherwise they are entertainment…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 314
Dec 27, 2022 · 7 min
Lenny Rachitsky's year-end roundup revisits his 250-plus past newsletter posts and podcast episodes, selecting the most popular ones and sorting them into problem-based categories such as building product, go-to-market…
SVPG · Marty CaganDec 22, 2022
Dec 22, 2022 · 3 min
Marty Cagan argues that policy is an integral part of product, not a separate concern, and that many product leaders underestimate its role. He notes that while most products treat policy as minor business rules like…
Product Talk · Teresa TorresDec 21, 2022
Dec 21, 2022 · 9 min
Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion, both product discovery coaches, walk through the eight most common mistakes teams make when defining product outcomes. They argue that outcomes often get mislabeled as outputs…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 187
Dec 20, 2022 · 5 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky recommends a curated set of product management courses, split into five for senior PMs and five for up-and-coming PMs, plus honorable mentions. He limits picks to live, cohort-based courses that have run…
Lenny’s Podcast112 min
Chris Hutchins · Dec 18, 2022
Key learnings- Committing to a steady weekly cadence, even for just 10 weeks, puts a podcast in roughly the top few percent of all shows ever…
- Only start a podcast if you would keep doing it for free for a long time, because most shows take many months to gain traction…
- Structure a first season as a fixed number of episodes (e.g., eight) so you can test whether you actually enjoy the work before…
Lenny’s Podcast75 min
Pete Kazanjy · Dec 15, 2022
Key learnings- Founders should personally run sales first, since outsourcing it early breaks the feedback loop on whether the product and…
- Build a repeatable sales motion before hiring: aim for roughly a 15-25% conversion from first meeting to customer across cohorts…
- Iterate on your pitch continuously: after each objection, update slides, talk tracks, and collateral so the next cohort of…
Lenny’s Podcast90 min
Camille Ricketts · Dec 11, 2022
Key learnings- Treat content like a product: define who the audience is and what painful job they need done before creating anything.
- Community-led growth works best when the product creates something users want to share, such as templates or creative workspaces.
- Measure brand discovery with net new visitors to your site month over month, rather than starting with rigid community ROI…
Product Talk · Teresa TorresDec 7, 2022
Dec 7, 2022 · 16 min
Teresa Torres argues that customer interviews are among the most valuable and sustainable ways for product teams to learn about customers, creating a compounding competitive advantage. She separates true customer…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 82
Dec 6, 2022 · 18 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky shares tactics from angel investor and founder Sam Corcos on getting real value from investors. The post argues founders often fail to activate their networks because they don't ask well, and covers…
Lenny’s Podcast110 min
Sahil Mansuri · Dec 4, 2022
Key learnings- Plan next year conservatively, but set short-term checkpoints (e.g., Q1 revenue targets) that unlock extra spend or trigger…
- Avoid founder optimism bias in forecasts; predetermine what decisions will follow from hitting or missing each milestone.
- Rethink sales comp so reps are rewarded for renewals, retention and customer quality, not just new bookings, since current plans…
Lenny’s Podcast92 min
Petra Wille · Nov 27, 2022
Key learnings- Define what a good product person looks like in your specific context, since many leaders only hold this as an implicit feeling…
- Start coaching with a development plan for each PM, even before a formal assessment, because most people already know what they…
- Identify the next bigger challenge for each direct report each quarter and deliberately assign it to help them grow faster.
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 108
Nov 22, 2022 · 26 min
Suril Kantaria, co-founder and CEO of Savvy, recounts the arc of a fintech startup that let employees buy their own health insurance with payment cards, from early missteps to a 2022 acquisition by a market incumbent…
Lenny’s Podcast85 min
Ian McAllister · Nov 20, 2022
Key learnings- New PMs should focus first on communicating, prioritizing, and executing, since other skills grow in importance with seniority.
- Answer first and then explain; when asked a 'when' question, give a date, and grade yourself after feedback to improve…
- Prioritization is a core PM skill across themes, projects, sequencing, scope, and personal time, and it strongly multiplies…
Lenny’s Podcast99 min
Gergely · Nov 17, 2022
Key learnings- Build real depth in a specific field before writing about it, since credibility from hands-on experience is hard to fake and…
- Set controllable goals, such as publishing on a fixed cadence, rather than outcome goals like subscriber counts you cannot…
- Create external deadlines and accountability, such as promises to paying readers or a publisher, to overcome the procrastination…
Product Talk · Teresa TorresNov 16, 2022
Nov 16, 2022 · 10 min
Teresa Torres announces that Product Talk has added Ellen Juhlin, a product coach and Senior Director of Product Management at Orion Labs, to its instructor pool. The post frames the expansion as part of Product Talk's…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 291
Nov 15, 2022 · 10 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky opens a series on how top product teams work, using Figma's CPO Yuhki Yamashita as the first case. The post walks through Figma's planning cadence, its shift from OKRs to narrative 'headlines' and…
Lenny’s Podcast88 min
Alex Hardimen · Nov 13, 2022
Key learnings- Define impact in service of mission: at a news company, subscriber growth matters, but so does a deeply reported story driving a…
- Build an essential subscription bundle by pairing a trusted news core with adjacent products like games, cooking, audio and…
- Organize product teams along two axes: functions (craft, career growth, standards) and cross-functional missions (consumer…
Lenny’s Podcast89 min
Matt Mochary · Nov 10, 2022
Key learnings- When you sense fear clouding judgment, make a low-stakes bet with a peer on the opposite prediction; Mochary says fear has…
- Deliver layoff news one-on-one, never via email or group chat, since impersonal delivery is what turns layoffs into anger and…
- Separate the decision from its implementation: decide based on what serves the customer, then address the hurt of each affected…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 135
Nov 8, 2022 · 17 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyA follow-up on activation metrics explaining a three-step method: brainstorm candidate moments from usage data, test them with regression against retention, then run experiments to confirm causality. It adds real reader…
SVPG · Marty CaganNov 7, 2022
Nov 7, 2022 · 5 min
Marty Cagan argues that the foundation of a strong empowered product team is unencumbered, direct access to four constituencies: customers and users, product data, business stakeholders, and engineers. He explains that…
Lenny’s Podcast111 min
Ben Williams · Nov 6, 2022
Key learnings- Start with a narrow, deep use case for one developer community (Snyk began with Node.js developers) to validate product-market…
- Design acquisition loops into the product itself, such as Snyk-branded pull requests that educate other developers and drive them…
- Build programmatic SEO assets, like Snyk Advisor's package health pages, that generate and index large volumes of pages…
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…
Product Talk · Teresa TorresOct 19, 2022
Oct 19, 2022 · 12 min
Grailed's Discovery team spent eight months building a curated feed that barely moved the business. After adopting continuous discovery habits and an opportunity solution tree, they reframed the problem in customer…
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…