Writer of Lenny's Newsletter and host of Lenny's Podcast.
Lenny Rachitsky surveys growth inflection stories from roughly two dozen well-known products to find what tends to precede sudden growth jumps. He sorts them into three groups: product improvements, external events that…
Lenny Rachitsky and Dan Shipper walk through how a Lenny-specific chatbot was built on GPT-3 using his newsletter archive. The piece explains the difference between GPT-3 and ChatGPT, why raw language models tend to…
Lenny Rachitsky profiles how Coda's product organization plans, reviews, and builds product, drawing on an interview with CPO Lane Shackleton. The post covers Coda's evolving planning cadence, OKR philosophy, review…
“If you’re just joining us, make sure to read part one of this series, where I cover the first three steps of starting your PLG motion: - Step 1: Map your funnel - Step 2: Pick a starting point - Step 3: Anticipate the most common pitfalls Now let’s continue with step 4. You can find on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Substack. Make sure to check out the Reforge courses she teaches, Advanced Growth Strategy and Experimentation & Testing, and…”
Hila Qu, a former VP of growth at Acorns and PLG lead at GitLab, lays out a practical guide to starting a product-led growth motion for B2B SaaS. The piece argues that PLG is not just a feature set but a go-to-market…
Lenny Rachitsky argues that true viral growth is rare and short-lived, and that most products spike when a large one-to-many broadcaster shares them. Drawing on Derek Thompson's Hit Makers and examples like Spotify…
Lenny Rachitsky recommends a curated set of product management courses, split into five for senior PMs and five for up-and-coming PMs, plus honorable mentions. He limits picks to live, cohort-based courses that have run…
Lenny Rachitsky shares tactics from angel investor and founder Sam Corcos on getting real value from investors. The post argues founders often fail to activate their networks because they don't ask well, and covers…
Suril Kantaria, co-founder and CEO of Savvy, recounts the arc of a fintech startup that let employees buy their own health insurance with payment cards, from early missteps to a 2022 acquisition by a market incumbent…
Lenny Rachitsky opens a series on how top product teams work, using Figma's CPO Yuhki Yamashita as the first case. The post walks through Figma's planning cadence, its shift from OKRs to narrative 'headlines' and…
A follow-up on activation metrics explaining a three-step method: brainstorm candidate moments from usage data, test them with regression against retention, then run experiments to confirm causality. It adds real reader…
Lenny Rachitsky and growth advisor Yuriy Timen ran a benchmarking survey of over 500 product teams to answer what counts as a good activation rate. The article defines activation as the share of new users who reach a…
Lenny Rachitsky explains how mission, vision, strategy, goals, roadmap, and tasks connect, working from the top down and showing where to begin. He illustrates each layer with well-known company examples and uses a…
Lenny Rachitsky expands his Racecar Growth Framework, breaking a startup's growth into a self-sustaining growth engine, kickstarts for early users, turbo boosts for temporary surges, lubricants for efficiency, mid-stage…
Emily Kramer, who led marketing at Asana, Carta and other companies, argues that much marketing work wastes time because teams lack alignment before work begins. She introduces GACCS (Goals, Audience, Creative…
Lenny uses the Lord of the Rings, especially Frodo's journey, as a lens for how product managers can build influence without relying on formal authority. He walks through seven strategies, each illustrated with Airbnb…
Lenny Rachitsky offers a five-point checklist for deciding when to sunset a product or feature, drawing on his Airbnb experience. The core argument is that a feature failing at least three of the criteria (low usage…
Olga Berezovsky, guest-writing for Lenny Rachitsky, argues that cohort retention is widely misunderstood and costly to get wrong, and offers a practical guide to measuring it. She recommends defining "active" by the…
Lenny answers a reader's question about growth levers beyond his consumer growth series. He recaps the Racecar Growth Framework (kickstarts, growth engines, lubricants, turbo boosts), then introduces two mid-stage…
Step six of Lenny Rachitsky's consumer-business series explains how products grow through a small set of engines: virality, SEO, and paid growth, plus sales and supply-driven demand for marketplaces. It argues founders…
Part five of a six-part series on building a consumer business, focused on retention and finding product-market fit. The post argues PMF is a spectrum of confidence, signaled by flattening retention curves, organic…
Lenny Rachitsky's fourth installment in a six-part series on launching consumer businesses argues that reliable early growth comes from a small menu of tactics, and that founders should pick two or three and focus…
Part three of Lenny Rachitsky's consumer-business series argues that busy audiences ignore ordinary products, so founders need a remarkable 'hook.' It offers four strategies for finding one: spotlighting what's unique…
This post, step two of a six-part series on launching consumer businesses, argues that early growth depends on picking an almost comically narrow 'super-specific who' as the first target audience. It draws on examples…
Lenny Rachitsky opens a six-part playbook for launching and scaling a consumer business, with this first installment focused on where startup ideas come from. Drawing on research into 50 successful consumer companies…
Lenny Rachitsky compiles lessons from founders and early growth leaders at marketplaces like Lyft, Thumbtack, Rover, and Udemy on how to earn trust between strangers. The core argument is that trust is built through a…
Lenny Rachitsky shares high-level structures from 20+ large companies' product management career ladders, including titles by level, evaluated competencies, and where IC and manager tracks split. He argues career…
Lenny draws on interviews with founders and product leaders at Noom, Duolingo, Grammarly, Calm, Spotify, Future, Flo and others to explain what helps consumer subscription apps last. The core argument is that winners…
Todd Jackson, a seed-stage investor at First Round Capital, interviewed founders of eight companies (Vanta, Flexport, Cocoon, Good Dog, Snackpass, Rec Room, LaunchDarkly, Pinwheel) about how they chose and validated…
Lenny Rachitsky surveys about two dozen venture investors on what growth rates count as good or great at each stage of a business. The post argues that early-stage investors weigh time-to-$1M ARR, retention, and…