Drawer 08 · 149 notes · 50 people · 2005–2026

Go-to-market & sales

Launches, sales, marketing, brand, and distribution

Q:
Answers from Go-to-market & sales notes, cited
Lenny’s Podcast94 min

The ultimate guide to JTBD

Bob Moesta · Aug 24, 2023
Key learnings
  • Customers hire products to make progress in a context; understanding the context and desired outcome matters more than simply…
  • Start from the struggling moment that causes demand, since a product alone does not create demand; use those moments to guide…
  • Model switching as forces: push and pull drive change, while anxiety of the new and habit of the present hold people back, and…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 89

When and how to run a billboard campaign

Jun 18, 2024 · 17 min
Subscriber post — summary only

Lenny Rachitsky synthesizes lessons from Stytch's CEO and marketing leaders at other startups on running out-of-home (billboard, bus, transit) ad campaigns for B2B software. The post argues OOH is best for brand…

@hnshah · Hiten Shah on X♥ 9
If I started a B2B company tomorrow, I’d do the product marketing myself for a while. I’d start by listening to how buyers describe us. What do they think we’re similar to? Why wouldn’t they switch? What keeps showing up in lost deals? Those answers would change how I explain
Lenny’s Podcast124 min

The ultimate guide to PR

Emilie Gerber · Mar 21, 2024
Key learnings
  • Press often delivers second-order value: third-party validation for sales emails, recruiting outreach, and investor or sponsor…
  • For funding announcements, keep the pitch simple: amount raised, investors, and one line on why it matters, offered as an…
  • Follow up respectfully every three or four days with new information, and move on to other relevant reporters after a few…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 232

Five steps to starting your product-led growth motion

Jan 10, 2023 · 20 min

“I’ve read hundreds of articles about product-led growth (PLG), and they all kind of blur together. So when founders ask me for advice on building their PLG motion, I still don’t know where to point them. Thus, when Hila Qu approached me about collaborating on a definitive deep-dive on building a PLG motion, I was thrilled. Hila helped scale Acorns from 1 million to 5 million users as their VP of growth, then joined GitLab, where she…”

Lenny’s Podcast90 min

How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business

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…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 60

60 ideas to boost your growth

Oct 12, 2021 · 15 min

This guest-written issue, drawn from Ali Abouelatta's First 1000 research, catalogs 60 examples of 'Turbo Boosts,' one-off events that temporarily accelerate growth. It frames them as the fuel-like components of a…

Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 181

Product-led marketing

Mar 28, 2023 · 15 min

Kyle Poyar argues that product-led growth (PLG) only works economically if customer acquisition cost stays near zero, roughly under $1 per unique website visitor. Using OpenView benchmark funnel math, he shows that a…

Lenny’s Podcast58 min

Seth Godin's best tactics for building remarkable products, strategies, brands and more

Seth Godin · Dec 8, 2024
Key learnings
  • Define quality as meeting spec, and relentlessly improve the spec in service of the people you serve rather than polishing…
  • Treat good taste as anticipating what people want just before they do, and build it by working alongside people with high…
  • Treat brand as a promise: decide what you stand for, what you don't do, and what you'd be missed for, then make a difficult…
SVPG · Marty CaganFeb 28, 2006

Death of a Salesman

Feb 28, 2006 · 4 min

Cagan argues that the traditional role of the salesperson is shrinking as customers now research, trial, and buy products online before ever talking to a rep. He identifies the main barriers that kept people buying…

@hnshah · Hiten Shah on X♥ 22
If a customer conversation has ever changed how you explain the product, you’ve already done product marketing. Friday at 10 AM PT I’m taking one B2B product through 16 jobs like that with AI. I’ll run the same work with and without the matching skill and see which version I’d
Lenny’s Podcast71 min

The power of strategic narrative

Andy Raskin · May 28, 2023
Key learnings
  • Replace the 'arrogant doctor' pitch (problem, solution, why we're better) with a story that opens by naming a shift from an old…
  • Name the old game in a few concise words, such as 'transactions' or 'opinions', since compact labels make the shift easy to…
  • Show that winners are already playing the new game, and frame the stakes as a clear choice between a very negative and a very…
SVPG · Marty CaganAug 16, 2022

Market Fit

Aug 16, 2022 · 5 min

The author argues that many companies reach an early beachhead of customers, assume product/market fit, and then stall because they neglected market fit. Market fit means discovering 'market pull': what makes customers…

Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 315

How to find the perfect name

Sep 2, 2025 · 9 min
Subscriber post — summary only

David Placek of Lexicon Branding outlines a step-by-step naming playbook drawn from decades of work on brands like Swiffer, Pentium and Vercel. He argues that a strong name builds trust, communicates an original idea…

The Looking Glass podcastJun 9, 2026

The Art and Excellence of Sales

Jun 9, 2026
Key learnings
  • Treat sales as a craft worth mastering, not a lesser discipline; understanding how customers buy makes product leaders far more…
  • Learn to listen closely to what customers are actually trying to accomplish before proposing solutions or pitching value.
  • Build trust through consistent follow-through, since credibility compounds over repeated interactions with buyers and internal…
HEY World · Jason FriedNov 29, 2025

A beta is like inviting guests over

Nov 29, 2025

Jason Fried argues that the best time to invite outside users into a product is only a week or two before launch, when it is essentially a near-final release rather than an early beta. At that stage he is not seeking…

Lenny’s Podcast76 min

Navigating comms and PR

Lulu Cheng Meservey · Mar 23, 2023
Key learnings
  • Make ideas spread by making them memorable and giving people a reason to repeat them, such as humor, a vivid mental image, an…
  • Test a catchphrase by asking whether a second-grader could understand it immediately; avoid inside jokes that only make sense…
  • Treat making mistakes of commission rather than omission as the better bet, since visible errors can be learned from while…
SVPG · Marty CaganAug 30, 2013

The Power of Reference Customers

Aug 30, 2013 · 5 min

Cagan argues that strong products are the foundation of a healthy business: weak products inflate acquisition costs, lengthen sales cycles, pressure prices and burden customer service. The most powerful antidote is a…

Lenny’s Podcast103 min

How to launch and grow your product

Ryan Hoover · Aug 7, 2022
Key learnings
  • Before launching on Product Hunt or elsewhere, define the goal first: customer acquisition, recruiting, fundraising, feedback…
  • Write launch taglines and descriptions the way customers describe your product to friends, not in polished PR language, since…
  • Use the product gallery as a visual story, such as a before-and-after or an evolution, since visitors look at visuals first on…