Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 152
Nov 22, 2019 · 5 min
““When we were starting out, we looked at the biggest marketplace companies – eBay, Craigslist, Amazon. There were two things in common: (1) They had all the supply, and (2) they had ugly products and brand. The lesson we took away from this was that all that matters is supply. So we decided to focus on that above all else. We postponed building brand and delightful product until we had liquidity. Dozens of other startups took another…”
Product Talk · Teresa TorresApr 21, 2026
Apr 21, 2026
Teresa Torres and Petra Wille argue that confident predictions about AI-driven change are often wrong, and that betting everything on one forecast is risky. Humans are poor at forecasting, and early adopters' experience…
Lenny’s Podcast95 min
Shreyas Doshi · Oct 31, 2024
Key learnings- Run a pre-mortem before launches by imagining the project has already failed, then surfacing tigers, paper tigers and elephants…
- Classify tasks as leverage, neutral or overhead; spend extra effort only on leverage tasks, and do less polish on neutral and…
- Beat procrastination on high-leverage work by doing a couple days of low-stakes placebo tasks first, then working from a…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 109
Jun 16, 2021
This is a short announcement newsletter pointing readers to a guest post Lenny Rachitsky wrote for a16z's Future site on choosing a North Star Metric. The guide draws on a survey of current and former employees at more…
SVPG · Marty CaganSep 3, 2019
Sep 3, 2019 · 4 min
Marty Cagan argues that a product succeeds only when it is solved simultaneously for the customer, the business, and the technology, which he frames as a multiplicative equation: if any one factor is zero, the product…
Substack · Shreyas Doshi♥ 325
Dec 30, 2025
Shreyas Doshi argues that clear thinking underpins everything product people do, yet most of us have significant gaps in how we reason. In this year-end essay he offers ten ideas for 2026, framed explicitly as useful to…
Lenny’s Podcast83 min
Ivan Zhao · Mar 6, 2025
Key learnings- Hide a grand vision inside a product people already want: Notion's 'sugar-coated broccoli' approach meant shipping familiar…
- Test whether your early adoption comes from real users, not just from your own taste: Ivan warns that building too much for…
- Don't be afraid to reset the codebase when the foundation is wrong, and favor better abstractions, since a small core can…
Product Talk · Teresa TorresDec 10, 2014
Dec 10, 2014 · 3 min
Teresa Torres argues that confidence in a product idea reflects how coherent a story feels in our heads, not whether the idea is true. She points to Research in Motion and AOL as examples of confident strategies that…
SVPG · Marty CaganJan 14, 2025
Jan 14, 2025 · 3 min
Marty Cagan argues that the product model, a way of organizing companies around discovering and delivering valuable solutions, is the key capability for responding to major opportunities and threats. He points to the…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 30
Jul 21, 2021 · 10 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky examines whether a startup needs a strong 'why now'—a clear reason the product is only possible at this moment. He argues it improves odds by enabling a 10x better product or a new untapped market, but…
producthabits.com · Hiten ShahNov 5, 2018
Nov 5, 2018 · 27 min
Hiten Shah traces how Square went from a 2009 idea born of a lost glassblowing sale to a company valued in the billions, by solving the costly problem of card acceptance for small businesses. He highlights the simple…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 285
May 23, 2023 · 23 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyAn interview-based deep dive into how Ramp's product org works, centered on a culture of velocity: planning only as far out as needed, anchoring strategy to the financial model, organizing teams around business…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 302
Jan 28, 2025 · 19 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny 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…
Lenny’s Podcast121 min
Sam Schillace · Jan 11, 2024
Key learnings- Treat 'why not' objections as signals to examine, and answer them with 'what if' questions about how far an idea could go if it…
- Judge disruption by polarization: if people either love or hate something, it is more likely disruptive than something met with…
- Make experiments cheap and fast so you can test ideas quickly, since you will almost always be wrong about the product until you…
SVPG · Marty CaganAug 17, 2023
Aug 17, 2023 · 3 min
Marty Cagan contrasts the traditional project model, where IT builds specific features by fixed dates, with the product model, where durable teams own business outcomes. He argues projects are slow, costly, and produce…
Lenny’s Podcast49 min
Shreyas Doshi Live · Oct 31, 2024
Key learnings- A real, pre-aligned product strategy can collapse weeks of annual planning into a few days, since most planning rituals are…
- Many decisions treated as reversible 'two-way doors' become one-way doors in practice once commitments, QBR narratives, and…
- Judging ideas on their merits rather than on social proof, authority, catchy metaphors, or alliteration is a core skill of good…
SVPG · Marty CaganJan 28, 2020
Jan 28, 2020 · 5 min
Marty Cagan argues that ethics deserves its own explicit place in product decisions, proposing a fifth risk alongside value, usability, feasibility and business viability: 'Should we build it?' He notes ethics often…
Lenny’s Podcast99 min
Christina Wodtke · Mar 16, 2023
Key learnings- OKRs amplify a company that already has strategy, empowered teams and psychological safety; they reveal dysfunction rather than…
- Use a weekly question as the core unit: what am I doing this week to move closer to our strategic outcomes?
- Keep strategy as a half-built plan across quarters and set the detailed key results only for the current quarter.
SVPG · Marty CaganJul 18, 2022
Jul 18, 2022 · 3 min
Marty Cagan argues that the best products often emerge during economic downturns, when companies lack the money to paper over weak products. He contends that many firms, especially those with abundant funding, assume…
Substack · Shreyas Doshi♥ 364
Mar 4, 2026
The essay argues that as AI makes execution cheaper and faster, the scarce skill for product managers becomes product sense: the judgment to decide what is worth building and why. Mechanical PM tasks like writing specs…
SVPG · Marty CaganSep 30, 2016
Sep 30, 2016 · 24 min
Marty Cagan revisits his earlier essay on the product manager role, arguing that confusion persists and that the role is more critical than ever. He contrasts three working modes: escalating everything to the CEO (a…
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…
SVPG · Marty CaganApr 15, 2012
Apr 15, 2012 · 3 min
Marty Cagan responds to a common challenge: why are products like Facebook, Amazon, and Google so successful if they seem poorly designed? He argues that product people often confuse their own tastes with the target…
SVPG · Marty CaganMar 30, 2020
Mar 30, 2020 · 4 min
Marty Cagan argues that the gap between the best product companies and the rest comes from a misunderstanding of technology's role. He recalls Marc Andreessen's warning that software is eating the world and notes that…