Bobby Pinero, CEO of Equals, recounts how adding a freemium plan and removing onboarding friction initially spiked user counts but then stalled engagement, retention, and revenue. The team reversed course by…
Lenny Rachitsky closes his seven-part B2B series by answering how long reaching $1M ARR typically takes, which growth channels scale B2B companies, and when and how much to charge. He draws on interviews with founders…
Lenny answers a reader question on how to split effort across conversion levers (focus, motivation, friction) and which tends to pay off most. He shares rules of thumb such as starting wide, mining past wins, and mixing…
“Yesterday I was fortunate enough to be a guest contributor to Andrew Chen’s blog. The response has been amazing. Below I’ve included that entire post, along with a dozen bonus examples and tips that didn’t make it into the original post. My intention is to dive deeper into some of these tactics and strategies in future posts, so if there’s anything specific that you’d like to hear more about, I’d love to know. Tweet me or leave a…”
Lenny 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…
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…
Lenny 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…
A companion post to a First Round Review essay, built around an interview with Booking.com's former CMO Arthur Kosten. It lays out five lessons from Booking's early growth: letting performance marketing shape supply…
Lenny Rachitsky profiles Saturn, a calendar-centered social app for high school students that became a top App Store performer. The post draws five lessons from its founders on building viral consumer social products…
The post examines how fast-growing B2B companies converted early free users into paying customers. It maps three early go-to-market strategies (bottom-up self-service, bottom-up with inside sales, and outbound sales)…
This excerpt from Andrew Chen's book argues that networked products should first build a small, self-sustaining 'atomic network' before expanding. The atomic network is the smallest unit that can stand on its own, and…
Lenny Rachitsky benchmarks what counts as good and great monthly SaaS churn, drawing on growth leaders and ProfitWell data across B2C, SMB/mid-market, and enterprise segments. He argues churn should be read by price…
Lenny Rachitsky argues that true viral growth is rare and short-lived, and that most products spike when a large one-to-many broadcaster shares them. Drawing on Derek Thompson's Hit Makers and examples like Spotify…
This case study traces how theSkimm, a daily email news digest aimed at young millennial women, grew to roughly 7 million subscribers despite a crowded and hostile media market. The founders bet on a routine-based…
Behavioral scientist Kristen Berman argues that people often act against their own intentions, and that behavioral design, which blends psychology and economics, can help product teams close the gap between intent and…
The post argues that distribution, not product alone, separates startups that succeed from those that fail, and that a unique distribution advantage is needed to reach audiences more cheaply than competitors. It lays…
Part 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…
Jason Fried describes a six-week sprint at Basecamp focused on smoothing the trial-to-paid onboarding experience, which bundled many small changes at once: a sample Getting Started project, a one-step project creation…
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…
This paid post explains how to measure retention using cohort analysis, including how to read cohort charts for trends and for signs of flattening that indicate product-market fit. It then previews a framework of seven…
Lenny Rachitsky's fourth installment in his B2B startup series argues that finding your first ten customers starts with trust and hand-to-hand effort, not scalable channels. Drawing on interviews with founders of…
The post offers a step-by-step guide to hiring and structuring a first growth team, drawing on interviews with a dozen growth practitioners. It argues growth should follow product-market fit, that acquisition is usually…
Marty Cagan argues that consumer internet services differ sharply from traditional enterprise software: there is no sales force or distribution channel between the product and its users, so ideas can be tested and…
Pete Kazanjy argues that bottom-up, self-serve B2B products should eventually layer in a direct sales motion, since waiting too long creates large opportunity costs and lets competitors capture enterprise segments. He…