Lenny’s Podcast145 min
Jason Cohen · Jan 25, 2026
Key learnings- Compute your growth ceiling: new customers added per month divided by monthly cancellation rate gives the maximum customer count…
- Ask 'what made you cancel?' rather than 'why did you cancel?' and use open-ended responses, since multiple-choice lists skew…
- Be skeptical of 'too expensive' as a cancellation reason; customers who already bought didn't find the price too high, so dig…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 225
Jun 9, 2020 · 12 min
“Hello, and welcome to the free monthly editionof my weekly newsletter. I’m Lenny, and each week I tackle reader questions about product, growth, working with humans, and anything else that’s stressing you out at the office. Q: What do you consider GOOD and GREAT retention? “Great retention is the scalable way to grow a product. It’s the best indicator of product-market fit, it is the most important factor in a user’s lifetime value…”
producthabits.com · Hiten ShahDec 10, 2018
Dec 10, 2018 · 19 min
This case study traces how Pieter Omvlee built Sketch, a lightweight vector drawing app for Mac, into a serious alternative to Adobe's Illustrator and Photoshop. Omvlee started with a student project, charged for it…
Lenny’s Podcast100 min
Jeanne Grosser · Nov 30, 2025
Key learnings- Treat go-to-market as an integrated lifecycle spanning marketing, sales, customer success, and support, mapping the jobs to be…
- Expect the buyer experience of being sold to to become a differentiator, so design the sales journey as a distinctive, valuable…
- Frame value around avoiding pain and reducing risk, since many buyers purchase to avoid downside rather than chase upside…
producthabits.com · Hiten ShahOct 15, 2018
Oct 15, 2018 · 35 min
This essay traces Medium's history from its 2012 launch by Evan Williams through its 2018 monetization struggles. It argues Medium's minimal design and long-form focus reinvigorated interest in in-depth writing and…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 262
Apr 23, 2024 · 18 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyA guest post by Kyle Poyar compiling 25 low-effort, high-impact quick wins that operators at well-known tech companies used in their first months in a role. The ideas span funnel friction, pricing tweaks, workflow…
Lenny’s Podcast117 min
Kunal Shah · Mar 24, 2024
Key learnings- Use the Delta 4 test: if a new product is at least four points better than the existing alternative on a 1-10 scale, it tends to…
- Check whether a feature is genuinely more efficient than the old way; adding technology alone does not guarantee a Delta 4…
- In low-income markets, evaluate user counts with caution: India can deliver huge DAUs but low ARPU, so judge business potential…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 86
Dec 14, 2021 · 12 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky polls sixteen growth experts on what counts as a good customer payback period across B2C, SMB and enterprise businesses. The post explains how to calculate payback on a gross-profit basis, why it matters…
Lenny’s Podcast117 min
Peter Sellis · Sep 20, 2026
Key learnings- Collaboration carries hidden coordination costs that slow teams down to the pace of the slowest node; a clear ideology plus clear…
- Give product leaders explicit, repeatable phrases that shortcut the company strategy, and tie them to both a mission and concrete…
- Growth often comes from deepening engagement with your core users (higher daily or weekly use) rather than chasing new monthly…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 243
Sep 17, 2024 · 24 min
Seed fundraising is presented as one of the most high-stakes and confusing parts of a founder's job, and this guide, co-written by two seed investors who have been involved in over 1,000 seed rounds, aims to make it…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 239
May 16, 2023 · 11 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny explains what investors mean by a "venture-scale" startup: a credible path to roughly $100M in annual revenue and a $1B+ valuation within about a decade. He argues most ideas, including many successful products…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 100
Mar 3, 2020 · 6 min
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader's question about building referral programs for marketplaces, drawing on his experience leading supply growth at Airbnb, where the host referral program became the biggest driver of…
Lenny’s Podcast76 min
Lauryn Isford · Feb 12, 2023
Key learnings- Experiment when you need to, mainly as risk mitigation for big changes; let customer research and mockups provide conviction for…
- Onboarding is a critical choke point for self-serve products because downstream conversion, deal closing, and team-wide adoption…
- For complex products, an immersive guided wizard that reduces cognitive load can outperform tooltips; tooltips still have a place…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 114
Oct 8, 2024 · 11 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky reports first results from a compensation survey of about 5,000 newsletter readers, finding that 75% prioritize salary over equity during negotiations. The post argues this reflects a desire for…
Lenny’s Podcast111 min
Jen Abel · Aug 23, 2026
Key learnings- Target only the executive decision-maker or their direct report (N minus one) using a 'pincer' approach, with the founder…
- Lead outreach with the executive-level value, the alpha your product unlocks for their career and business unit, not just…
- Run the intro call as an informal one-on-one conversation: no demo, no slides, no recording, and let the buyer talk first to…
SVPG · Marty CaganApr 21, 2013
Apr 21, 2013 · 3 min
Marty Cagan argues that many product teams, both in startups and established companies, spend most of their effort capturing value (pricing tests, ad optimization, cost cutting) rather than creating it. Startups often…
Product Talk · Teresa TorresAug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 · 4 min
Teresa Torres recounts meeting a fitness-trainer founder at a startup pitch event whose customer definition was vague and whose validation relied on survey answers about hypothetical future purchases. She argues that…
SVPG · Marty CaganMay 31, 2005
May 31, 2005 · 4 min
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…
SVPG · Marty CaganJul 12, 2007
Jul 12, 2007
Cagan argues that many product managers, especially those coming from engineering, have only a shallow grasp of how their product and company make money. He recommends cultivating a relationship with someone in the…
Product Talk · Teresa TorresJan 19, 2022
Jan 19, 2022 · 14 min
Teresa Torres reviews how her coaching business has changed and lays out her plans for 2022. She explains that her main goal is to get more product trios adopting continuous discovery, but that this impact is hard to…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 235
Mar 14, 2023 · 7 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyA practical brainstorming list of growth tactics organized by funnel stage and team area: top-of-funnel acquisition (short and long term), monetization, conversion and activation, retention, and team velocity. The post…
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 Newsletter · Free post♥ 11
Apr 7, 2020 · 3 min
Lenny Rachitsky announces that his product newsletter, started as a side project after leaving Airbnb, is becoming a paid subscription business. Paid subscribers will get weekly, more in-depth editions, priority answers…
produxlabs.com · Melissa PerriMar 11, 2020
Mar 11, 2020
Product teams often face a flood of feature requests from support and sales, and it is hard to tell which ones deserve engineering time. Perri argues that a single question, asking how much revenue a request will…