Lenny Rachitsky and Kyle Poyar compiled lessons from more than 20 AI product builders on what surprised them about shipping AI features. The post argues that AI products need fresh thinking: prototype to discover what…
Lenny explains how to measure retention using cohort charts, and why a curve that flattens signals product-market fit. He then lays out seven levers for improving retention, ranked by expected impact: improving the…
“For many of us, the beginning of the year is a fresh start. It’s an opportunity to recommit to the things that matter most to us. Last year, I wrote “What I’m Saying No to This Year—And Why” to clearly outline what I wanted to focus on”
Marty Cagan argues against the view that a technology company is essentially made of engineers who build software and salespeople who sell it, with everyone else treated as overhead. He contends that combining even…
An interview with Gong's chief product officer on how the company builds product. It covers two-tier annual and quarterly planning, autonomous multi-skill pods organized around problem areas, the decision to skip OKRs…
Teresa Torres, a product discovery coach, shares the standout books from her 2013 reading list of roughly 50 titles. She recommends a mix of sales, energy management, luck versus skill, analytics, presentation…
Teresa Torres argues that 'outcomes over outputs' is easy to state but hard to practice, because many teams still ship features while being asked to deliver impact. She defines outputs as what a team builds and outcomes…
Shreyas Doshi argues that peer-reviewed studies on human psychology and behavior are often over-trusted by smart people. Such research typically reports averages and correlations across populations, which says little…
Marty Cagan argues that Six Sigma, a quality-control methodology proven in manufacturing, does real damage when applied to software product discovery and development. He observes that once influential innovators such as…
Marty Cagan argues that engineers often make excellent product managers because they understand what is technically possible, and that the move from engineering to product management requires specific mindset and skill…
Lenny Rachitsky and Noam Segal report on a 1,750-respondent survey of tech workers about AI productivity. The core argument is that AI is overdelivering for most people, with the biggest gains in founders and PMs, while…
Teresa Torres argues that most product ideas are born from fleeting thoughts, but only some should become businesses. She offers a set of questions to test an idea's viability before investing heavily. Her approach…
Marty Cagan describes the "feed the beast" problem, where product teams feed a hungry development organization with specs just to keep engineers busy, regardless of whether the products are worth building. He argues…
Cagan argues that the next big product is usually not a wholly new market but a new version of something existing that does the job far better, faster, or cheaper, thereby redefining its category. He illustrates this…
This episode of Just Now Possible features Tendos AI's leaders discussing how they automate the tendering workflow for construction manufacturers, where teams manually parse huge bid-request PDFs, match products, price…
Teresa Torres interviews the founders of Rest, a startup that built a voice-first AI sleep coach grounded in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTI). The team began by noticing that users of their podcast app…
Lenny Rachitsky answers an investor's question about evaluating marketplace ideas by arguing that the business fundamentals matter more than the marketplace structure itself. The free preview lays out the first several…
Lenny Rachitsky previews Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky's upcoming book Click and their new two-day Foundation Sprint for launching big projects. The post traces the origin of the approach to the Google Meet story and…
Teresa Torres argues that AI evals should be a core discovery habit for product teams, not just an engineering concern. Because LLM outputs are probabilistic and semantic, traditional pass/fail unit tests don't work…
Marty Cagan argues that 'specials'—large customer or partner deals that come with a condition to build exactly what they request—can derail a product company. Although the cash is tempting, especially for cash-strapped…
Cagan argues that user experience design should be completed before implementation begins, even though requirements/design and implementation/testing can each be run in parallel within their own pairs. He explains that…
Teresa Torres argues that a lack of web traffic should not stop product teams from learning, even if A/B testing is their only experimentation tool. Using a worked example of testing testimonials on a blog's about page…
Marty Cagan argues against a common corporate arrangement that splits the product role between a 'product manager' who handles customers and stakeholders and a 'product owner' who handles the backlog and developers. He…
Marty Cagan answers the most common objections people raise against the idea of empowered engineers, the engineers who take part in product discovery rather than only building what they are handed. He argues that the…