Working notes from product people

Ask the people who’ve done it.

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Answers quote and cite the source notes

01 — TopicsFourteen drawers, sorted.

3 more drawersBrowse all 14 topics →
Open drawer · 03

Growth & retention

208 notes · 72 people · 2005–2026
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 1,602

500,000

Sep 11, 2023 · 11 min

“This week the newsletter hit 500,000 subscribers, which I’m told makes it among the top five largest newsletters on Substack and one of the largest newsletters broadly. Friggin’ bonkers. A big round number is a good time to reflect, so I’ve collected some lessons from my journey. I still only sort of know what I’m doing, and it’s unclear where this all goes, but if you’re thinking about embarking on a writing journey, or are just…”

Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 1,022

How Duolingo reignited user growth

Feb 28, 2023 · 21 min

Jorge Mazal, former CPO of Duolingo, recounts how the company reversed a slide in daily active user growth and eventually grew DAU about 4.5x over four years. The journey began with failed attempts: a…

@shreyas · Shreyas Doshi on X♥ 204
This happens to smart people because of: 1. Deep-rooted identity of “I am good at product” (vs. “I am good at winning” or something like that) 2. Moral aversion against marketing & distribution 3. A habit of seeking virtue points by proclaiming “I just want to serve my users”
Lenny’s Podcast97 min

The ultimate guide to AEO: How to get ChatGPT to recommend your product

Ethan Smith · Sep 14, 2025
Key learnings
  • Everything that works in traditional SEO also works for AEO, so start with landing pages targeting high-volume keywords before…
  • In LLM answers you win by being mentioned across many citations, not by ranking first, so pursue multiple third-party mentions…
  • Early-stage companies can win in AEO quickly, since a single citation from a Reddit thread, YouTube video, or blog can get you…
Lenny’s Podcast79 min

Growth tactics, retention strategies, and becoming a better writer

Julian Shapiro · Sep 25, 2022
Key learnings
  • Pursue product-led acquisition by designing features where users naturally invite others, such as settling debts, sharing…
  • Build user state, like reputation, audience, or social graphs that cannot transfer off-platform, so accumulated investment makes…
  • Prefer evergreen topics and keep updating old writing, since Julian treats his handbooks and posts as living assets rather than…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 224

What is good retention?

Jun 9, 2020 · 12 min

Lenny Rachitsky and Casey Winters surveyed 20 experienced growth practitioners to define what good and great retention looks like across business types. They asked for benchmarks on user retention at six months and net…

@lissijean · Melissa Perri on X♥ 8
Most teams make the mistake of waiting for data to magically appear before building their AI product. They get stuck in the classic chicken-and-egg problem: you need data to build good AI, but you need users to generate that data. So they wait. And wait. And wait some more. /1

02 — FrameworksModels, annotated.

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03 — PeopleWho wrote the notes.

All 10 people →

04 — QuestionsAnswered from the notes.

All 32 questions →

Where notes come from

NewsletterLenny’s Newsletter106 free posts, with a longer excerpt.
Subscriber postsSummary only229 paid posts: our summary, at most two short quotes, and a link.
PodcastLenny’s Podcast322 episodes, each with 5–8 key learnings and timestamps.
EssaysSVPG · The Beautiful Mess499 essays from Marty Cagan and John Cutler.
Substack & blogsShreyas · Julie · Jason · Hiten577 essays and posts from independent writers.
XPosts on product58 posts, filtered for product relevance.