Working notes from product people

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01 — TopicsFourteen drawers, sorted.

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Open drawer · 08

Go-to-market & sales

145 notes · 50 people · 2005–2026
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 254

How to kickstart and scale a consumer business—Step 4: Find your early adopters by doing things that don’t scale

Jul 26, 2022 · 54 min

“Welcome to part four (maybe my favorite!) of our six-part series on kickstarting and scaling a consumer business. At this point, you have your startup idea, a good sense of your super-specific who, and a hook. In this post, we bring it all together to go find your first 1,000 users. If you’re just joining us, here’s where we are at, and what’s ahead: - Step 1: INSIGHT: Come up with your idea - Step 2: AUDIENCE: Identify your…”

Lenny’s Podcast134 min

An inside look at Figma’s unique GTM motion

Claire Butler · Sep 7, 2023
Key learnings
  • Focus go-to-market on the individual contributors who use your product daily; their love and advocacy spread the product into…
  • Keep the free tier generous, such as unlimited collaborators on a starter team, so teams can adopt and build confidence before…
  • Early on, treat metrics as weak signal; look for a few users who love the product and are excited to play with it, rather than…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 73

GTM motions of 30 B2B SaaS companies

Aug 24, 2021 · 12 min
Subscriber post — summary only

Lenny Rachitsky analyzes how 30 fast-growing B2B SaaS companies chose their go-to-market motions, covering product-led versus sales-led approaches, top-down versus bottom-up targeting, and which market segments they…

@hnshah · Hiten Shah on X♥ 24
AI makes bad product marketing look finished. That’s the part I don’t trust. A competitive brief can sound current while leaning on an old source. Positioning can sound sharp even when the logic underneath is a guess. A battlecard can look complete and still fail the rep who
Lenny’s Podcast97 min

"Sell the alpha, not the feature": The enterprise sales playbook for $1M to $10M ARR

Jen Abel · Nov 9, 2025
Key learnings
  • Founder-led sales is a competitive advantage because founders are the visionary and can spot budding insights that salespeople…
  • Write cold outreach that leads with relevance, a counterintuitive insight, and the problem rather than the solution, kept to…
  • Before buying tools, manually find and write thoughtful notes to about 30 prospects; use the response pattern to refine messaging…
Lenny’s Podcast100 min

What world-class GTM looks like in 2026

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…
Lenny’s Podcast75 min

Founder-led sales

Pete Kazanjy · Dec 15, 2022
Key learnings
  • Founders should personally run sales first, since outsourcing it early breaks the feedback loop on whether the product and…
  • Build a repeatable sales motion before hiring: aim for roughly a 15-25% conversion from first meeting to customer across cohorts…
  • Iterate on your pitch continuously: after each objection, update slides, talk tracks, and collateral so the next cohort of…
@hnshah · Hiten Shah on X♥ 23
If you work on a B2B product, product marketing is probably already part of your job whether or not it’s in your title. It shows up when something you learn from the market changes how the product gets explained or sends the team back into the product. Friday at 10 AM PT I’m

02 — FrameworksModels, annotated.

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03 — PeopleWho wrote the notes.

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04 — QuestionsAnswered from the notes.

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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.