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TryHow do I know I have product-market fit?Getting started with AI evalsPricing a new B2B productSenior PM → Group PM

01 — TopicsFourteen drawers, sorted.

01 · Product strategy

Product strategy610

  1. 10 ideas for 2026SUB
  2. Lessons from 1,000+ YC startups: Resilience, tar pit ideas, pivoting, morePOD
  3. PositioningLN
  4. How Duolingo reignited user growthLN
  1. Getting better at product strategyLN
  2. PositioningLN
  3. 5 essential questions to craft a winning strategyPOD
  4. Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a companyPOD
  1. Unpacking Innovation - All Things Product Podcast with Teresa Torres & Petra WillePT
  2. What will make personal AI go big?LG
  3. Trash Can Tracking - All Things Product Podcast with Teresa Torres & Petra WillePT
  4. Creating Aha! Builder: Concept to Code, No Engineers RequiredPT
Open drawer ↓
02 · Discovery

Discovery536

  1. Lessons from 1,000+ YC startups: Resilience, tar pit ideas, pivoting, morePOD
  2. How to develop product senseLN
  3. How the most successful B2B startups came up with their original ideaLN
  4. The ultimate guide to JTBDPOD
  1. The ultimate guide to JTBDPOD
  2. How to develop product senseLN
  3. Building product at Stripe: craft, metrics, and customer obsessionPOD
  4. How to validate your B2B startup ideaLN
  1. Generating Opportunity Solution Trees with AI: How Vistaly Rebuilt Its Product Around Interview Synthesis, Evals, and Repair LoopsPT
  2. Unpacking Innovation - All Things Product Podcast with Teresa Torres & Petra WillePT
  3. Trash Can Tracking - All Things Product Podcast with Teresa Torres & Petra WillePT
  4. Ch. 10: Testing AssumptionsPT
Open drawer ↓
03 · Growth

Growth208

  1. 500,000LN
  2. Growth tactics, retention strategies, and becoming a better writerPOD
  3. How Duolingo reignited user growthLN
  4. The ultimate guide to AEO: How to get ChatGPT to recommend your productPOD
  1. How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1,000 usersLN
  2. How Duolingo reignited user growthLN
  3. Growth tactics, retention strategies, and becoming a better writerPOD
  4. How to kickstart and scale a consumer business—Step 4: Find your early adopters by doing things that don’t scaleLN
  1. 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chiefPOD
  2. $5300 in $100s: The verdictHEY
  3. $5300 in $100sHEY
  4. Why SaaS freemium playbooks don’t work in AI, and what to do insteadLN
Open drawer ↓
04 · Pricing

Pricing76

  1. Pricing your SaaS productLN
  2. How to describe your business as an equationLN
  3. He saved OpenAI, invented the “Like” button, and built Google Maps: Bret Taylor on the future of careers, coding, agents, and morePOD
  4. The Subscription Value Loop: A framework for growing consumer subscription businessesLN
  1. Pricing your SaaS productLN
  2. Pricing your AI product: Lessons from 400+ companies and 50 unicornsPOD
  3. The Subscription Value Loop: A framework for growing consumer subscription businessesLN
  4. Lessons from going freemium: a decision that broke our businessLN
  1. 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chiefPOD
  2. $5300 in $100sHEY
  3. How to close $100K+ enterprise deals, step by stepPOD
  4. Why SaaS freemium playbooks don’t work in AI, and what to do insteadLN
Open drawer ↓
05 · Building AI products

Building AI products298

  1. OpenAI’s CPO on how AI changes must-have skills, moats, coding, startup playbooks, morePOD
  2. Inside ChatGPT: The fastest-growing product in historyPOD
  3. What people are vibe coding (and actually using)LN
  4. You should be playing with GPTs at workLN
  1. OpenAI’s CPO on how AI changes must-have skills, moats, coding, startup playbooks, morePOD
  2. How to build AI product senseLN
  3. Inside ChatGPT: The fastest-growing product in historyPOD
  4. Build your personal AI copilotLN
  1. What will we use our minds for?LG
  2. Generating Opportunity Solution Trees with AI: How Vistaly Rebuilt Its Product Around Interview Synthesis, Evals, and Repair LoopsPT
  3. The grief, loneliness, and burnout sweeping through the tech industry right nowPOD
  4. Experts Lead ExpertsSVPG
Open drawer ↓
06 · Leadership

Leadership560

  1. Jenny WenPOD
  2. The paths to power: How to grow your influence and advance your careerPOD
  3. Building a long and meaningful careerPOD
  4. Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impactPOD
  1. From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular productsPOD
  2. How to debug a team that isn’t working: the Waterline ModelLN
  3. Lessons from scaling StripePOD
  4. $46B of hard truths from Ben Horowitz: Why founders fail and why you need to run toward fear (a16z co-founder)POD
  1. Recorded Conversations - All Things Product Podcast with Teresa Torres & Petra WillePT
  2. TBM 443: The Standard SetterTBM
  3. New Resource: 23 Videos Answering Your Career QuestionsSUB
  4. TBM 442: 10 Career Traps (Thoughtful People Fall Into)TBM
Open drawer ↓
07 · PM career

PM career466

  1. How to Spot a World-Class DesignerPOD
  2. 10 ideas for 2026SUB
  3. 500,000LN
  4. Time management techniques that actually workLN
  1. How to get into product managementLN
  2. Building a long and meaningful careerPOD
  3. Why Product Sense is the only product skill that will matter in the AI ageSUB
  4. What it takes to become a top 1% PMPOD
  1. What will we use our minds for?LG
  2. TBM 443: The Standard SetterTBM
  3. New Resource: 23 Videos Answering Your Career QuestionsSUB
  4. TBM 442: 10 Career Traps (Thoughtful People Fall Into)TBM
Open drawer ↓
08 · Go-to-market

Go-to-market145

  1. PositioningLN
  2. My favorite product management templatesLN
  3. How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1,000 usersLN
  4. What world-class GTM looks like in 2026POD
  1. What world-class GTM looks like in 2026POD
  2. An inside look at Figma’s unique GTM motionPOD
  3. "Sell the alpha, not the feature": The enterprise sales playbook for $1M to $10M ARRPOD
  4. Founder-led salesPOD
  1. $5300 in $100s: The verdictHEY
  2. $5300 in $100sHEY
  3. How to close $100K+ enterprise deals, step by stepPOD
  4. From COVID Pivot to AI World Building: How Snapbar Reinvented the Photo ExperiencePT
Open drawer ↓
09 · Startups

Startups288

  1. Lessons from 1,000+ YC startups: Resilience, tar pit ideas, pivoting, morePOD
  2. Inside ChatGPT: The fastest-growing product in historyPOD
  3. How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1,000 usersLN
  4. How to kickstart and scale a consumer businessLN
  1. Lessons from 1,000+ YC startups: Resilience, tar pit ideas, pivoting, morePOD
  2. How to kickstart and scale a consumer businessLN
  3. How the most successful B2B startups came up with their original ideaLN
  4. Lessons from a two-time unicorn builder, 50-time startup advisor, and 20-time company board memberPOD
  1. Why companies are becoming a series of loopsPOD
  2. Building AI for Women's Health: How Hertility Combined Bayesian Diagnosis and Scan AutomationPT
  3. From COVID Pivot to AI World Building: How Snapbar Reinvented the Photo ExperiencePT
  4. Great Products, Bad CompaniesSVPG
Open below ↓
10 · Product design

Product design131

  1. How to Spot a World-Class DesignerPOD
  2. How to develop product senseLN
  3. Jenny WenPOD
  4. When AI Has Better Taste Than YouLG
  1. How to Spot a World-Class DesignerPOD
  2. Jenny WenPOD
  3. 35 years of product design wisdom from Apple, Disney, Pinterest, and beyondPOD
  4. Building beautiful products with Stripe’s Head of DesignPOD
  1. Unpacking Innovation - All Things Product Podcast with Teresa Torres & Petra WillePT
  2. What will make personal AI go big?LG
  3. AI for No Good ReasonLG
  4. How to Stop Complaining About Your SoftwareLG
Open drawer ↓
11 · Metrics

Metrics316

  1. How Duolingo reignited user growthLN
  2. The ultimate guide to A/B testingPOD
  3. The ultimate guide to AEO: How to get ChatGPT to recommend your productPOD
  4. What is good retention?LN
  1. The ultimate guide to A/B testingPOD
  2. How to describe your business as an equationLN
  3. How to measure cohort retentionLN
  4. How Duolingo reignited user growthLN
  1. Generating Opportunity Solution Trees with AI: How Vistaly Rebuilt Its Product Around Interview Synthesis, Evals, and Repair LoopsPT
  2. Ch. 10: Testing AssumptionsPT
  3. 4 New Evals and 16 Experiment Variants to Fix 1 Customer ComplaintPT
  4. Get My Eval Test Harness and Run Your First ExperimentPT
Open drawer ↓
3 more drawersBrowse all 14 topics →
Open drawer · 09

Startups & founders

288 notes · 89 people · 2005–2026
popularrelevantnewest
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 571

How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1,000 users

May 12, 2020 · 22 min

“👉 Updated version of this post here 👈 Hello, and welcome to a free monthly edition of my 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. Send me your questions and in return, I’ll humbly offer actionable real-talk advice. 🤜🤛 If you find this post valuable, check out some of my other posts: 1. How To Know If You've…”

Read at lennysnewsletter.com ↗
Lenny’s Podcast128 min

Inside ChatGPT: The fastest-growing product in history

Nick Turley · Aug 9, 2025
Key learnings
  • Ship early to learn what people actually want; with AI, the valuable behaviors are emergent, so you won't know what to polish…
  • Treat the model itself as a product: iterate on it using real user use cases, personality/vibe checks, and new capabilities like…
  • Set the team's pace deliberately by asking whether work is 'maximally accelerated', separating fast product iteration from…
Watch ↗
@hnshah · Hiten Shah on X♥ 28
Founders are doing product marketing earlier than they think. The market starts teaching you how buyers see the product almost immediately. What they compare it to affects the story you tell. Objections and lost deals often expose something deeper about the product itself. That
Oct 7, 2026View on X ↗Note →
Lenny’s Podcast103 min

Lessons from 1,000+ YC startups: Resilience, tar pit ideas, pivoting, more

Dalton Caldwell · Apr 18, 2024
Key learnings
  • Keep the startup alive: the core mantra is 'don't die,' since much of startup success comes from persisting through near-death…
  • Before quitting, ask whether you still enjoy the work, your co-founders, and your customers; if you love those, lean toward…
  • A good pivot moves 'warmer,' toward domains you already know or have built experience in, and often grows out of what you learned…
Watch ↗
@hnshah · Hiten Shah on X♥ 14
Founders are doing product marketing earlier than they think. It usually shows up when a buyer says something you weren’t expecting. That gap between how you describe the product and how buyers see it can change the story you tell and what gets built next. If you’re a founder
Oct 8, 2026View on X ↗Note →

02 — FrameworksModels, annotated.

All frameworks →
Fig. 01 · Opportunity Solution Tree · 130 notes

Opportunity Solution Tree

Mission → Vision → Strategy → Goals → Roadmap → Task
Lenny RachitskyLenny’s Newsletter · Oct 2022 · subscriber
How to get into product management
Lenny RachitskyLenny’s Newsletter · Jun 2019
How Figma builds product
Lenny RachitskyLenny’s Newsletter · Nov 2022 · subscriber
The one question that saves product careers
Matt LeMayLenny’s Podcast · Aug 2025

Most often discussed by Claire Vo. See all 130 notes →

Continuous DiscoveryTeresa Torres97 notesJobs To Be DoneBob Moesta53 notesProduct TrioChristina Wodtke42 notesProduct DiscoveryMarty Cagan32 notesMinimum Viable ProductEric Ries28 notesProduct Operating ModelMelissa Perri26 notesAssumption TestingTeresa Torres25 notesOKRsClaire Hughes Johnson25 notesStory MappingTeresa Torres23 notes

03 — PeopleWho wrote the notes.

All 10 people →
LR

Lenny Rachitsky

News · Pod · X · @lennysan

Writer of Lenny's Newsletter and host of Lenny's Podcast.

326 essays317 episodes6 posts
TT

Teresa Torres

Product Talk · X · @ttorres

Product discovery coach, author of Continuous Discovery Habits; writes Product Talk.

474 essays24 posts1 guest spot
MC

Marty Cagan

SVPG

Founder of Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG) and author of Inspired, Empowered and Transformed.

478 essays1 guest spot
HS

Hiten Shah

Medium · X · @hnshah

Co-founder of Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics and FYI; writes about product, SaaS and customer research.

20 essays9 posts
SD

Shreyas Doshi

Substack · X · @shreyas

Product leader (Stripe, Twitter, Google, Yahoo) and advisor known for frameworks on product sense and…

19 essays2 episodes7 posts2 guest spots
JF

Jason Fried

HEY World · @jasonfried

Co-founder and CEO of 37signals (Basecamp, HEY), co-author of Rework and Shape Up's home company.

28 essays1 guest spot
MP

Melissa Perri

Blog · X · @lissijean

Author of Escaping the Build Trap, founder of Produx Labs and Product Institute.

20 essays7 posts1 guest spot
JZ

Julie Zhuo

The Looking Glass · X · @joulee

Former VP of Product Design at Facebook, author of The Making of a Manager; writes The Looking Glass.

16 essays3 episodes4 posts1 guest spot

04 — QuestionsAnswered from the notes.

All 32 questions →
Q:

How do I build product sense?

Product sense is a learnable skill, not a fixed gift, and the sources agree on building it through deliberate immersion in customers and products. Jules Walter argues it…

Read the answer →Q:

How do I write a product strategy?

The sources agree that a product strategy is your plan for making the product vision real, not a feature list or a spec. Start by deciding what matters most and being…

Read the answer →Q:

What is an empowered product team?

An empowered product team is a cross-functional team given problems to solve rather than features to build, and held accountable for outcomes. Marty Cagan defines it by…

Read the answer →Q:

When should a startup raise prices?

A startup should raise its prices earlier and more often than most teams do, because founders tend to underprice and rarely revisit price. Patrick Campbell puts it…

Read the answer →Q:

What makes a great product manager?

Great product managers, per these sources, are judged by business outcomes and value/viability ownership rather than feature output or backlog administration. Marty…

Read the answer →Q:

How do I choose a north star metric?

The sources agree that the North Star Metric is tied to strategy rather than being just a dashboard number. Lenny Rachitsky frames it as your strategy, and his guide…

Read the answer →

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.