Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 612
Aug 4, 2020 · 5 min
“Hello and welcome to thefree monthly editionof my weekly newsletter. I’m Lenny, and each week I humbly tackle reader questions about product, growth, working with humans, and anything else that’s stressing you out at the office. Q: I’ve seen you share a few PM templates in the past. Do you have a place to find all of your favorite templates? Now I do! Below are all of my favorite templates and frameworks that I rely on. As a bonus, I…”
Lenny’s Podcast68 min
Marty Cagan · Aug 21, 2022
Key learnings- Empowered product teams are handed problems to solve with measurable outcomes, not prioritized feature lists to ship; celebrate…
- Product managers are equally responsible for the 'how' - ensuring a solution is valuable, usable, feasible, and viable - not just…
- Limit problem validation time when the founder already understands the problem; spend most effort on solution discovery through…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 291
Nov 15, 2022 · 10 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny 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…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 496
Nov 12, 2024 · 18 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyTal Raviv, a long-time individual-contributor PM, argues that flatter tech orgs demand PMs build their own systems to stay effective and healthy. The post offers practical tactics such as finishing meeting action items…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 89
Jul 27, 2021 · 8 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny argues that most teams should skip elaborate prioritization frameworks and use a simple impact-versus-cost sort of T-shirt-sized ideas, then refine it with team input. He stresses that the roadmap must follow a…
Lenny’s Podcast108 min
Cat Wu · Apr 23, 2026
Key learnings- Shorten the path from idea to user: AI-era timelines have shrunk from six months to days or a week, so PMs should focus on…
- Ship features as clearly labeled research previews to lower the commitment of launching and get fast user feedback that can be…
- Set a clear, specific goal for who the key user is and what success means, which rules out many approaches and speeds decisions.
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 Podcast78 min
Janna Bastow · Oct 16, 2022
Key learnings- Treat a roadmap as a prototype for your strategy: its value lies in the roadmapping process of sharing and testing assumptions…
- Replace timeline-based roadmaps with Now, Next, Later buckets so that not every item implies a due date, since uncertainty grows…
- Reserve firm dates for truly fixed constraints such as regulatory deadlines or seasonal rushes, and plan extra buffer and soft…
Lenny’s Podcast118 min
Karri Saarinen · Oct 8, 2023
Key learnings- Ship features early to a small set of users or internal teammates and polish only at general release, rather than perfecting…
- Co-create early features with one or a few large customers to clarify how complex workflows should actually work.
- Give project teams ownership of their features; craft often emerges when engineers and designers discover better interaction…
Lenny’s Podcast109 min
Bill Carr · Nov 2, 2023
Key learnings- Start product decisions from the customer's real problem and work backwards to the required solution, rather than starting from…
- Avoid compound metrics that blend several numbers into one index; track each important metric individually so you can see which…
- Organize teams around a single-threaded leader who owns the people, resources and roadmap for a durable area, rather than…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 284
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 Podcast121 min
Naomi Gleit · Oct 27, 2024
Key learnings- Keep one canonical doc per project that links to all other docs, listing workstreams, single-threaded owners, processes…
- Pursue a dream company or role persistently, even by volunteering informally in the role you want until the formal job becomes a…
- Pick a clear activation or retention milestone so the whole team optimizes toward one shared goal, even if the exact threshold is…
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.
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 33
Apr 29, 2020
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky argues that a product leader's core job is aligning everyone on the same direction, and that goals are the tool for this. He places goals in a chain from mission to vision to strategy to goals to…
Lenny’s Podcast121 min
David Singleton · May 4, 2023
Key learnings- Co-create new products with a small, carefully chosen group of early users, sharing product regularly and expanding only once…
- Engineers at Stripe are expected to act like PMs, so hiring and developing product-minded engineers can reduce the need for early…
- Use friction logging: pick a specific user persona, walk through the product end-to-end, and note every point of friction to find…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 335
Sep 26, 2023 · 15 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky profiles how Linear, the project-management tool, builds its product, based on an interview with CEO Karri Saarinen. The post's core argument is that a small, craft-focused setup works well: no dedicated…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 1,177
Aug 13, 2024 · 12 min
Lenny Rachitsky shares ten time-management tactics he uses daily after years of trying productivity books, emphasizing ones that have lasted beyond a few weeks. The core argument is that small, durable habits, such as…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 105
Dec 16, 2021 · 10 min
Guest post by Justin Gage, writer of Technically, offering five practical technical areas product managers should understand to work more effectively with engineers. He argues that a strong technical foundation makes…
Lenny’s Podcast70 min
Paige Costello · Jul 9, 2023
Key learnings- Plan on a rolling 12-month horizon, refreshed every six months, so the immediate half has higher confidence and the business…
- Structure planning in nested altitudes (company, pillar, area, team) with metrics at each level so every team knows the outcome…
- Use a broad-then-narrow process for each problem: choose the customer, then the problem, then the solution, and pick success…
Lenny’s Podcast122 min
Nir Eyal · Dec 29, 2023
Key learnings- Distraction is mostly driven by internal discomfort such as boredom, anxiety, or fatigue rather than external pings, so identify…
- Use the 10-minute rule: when tempted to drift, set a 10-minute timer, return to the task or ride out the urge, and treat it as…
- Replace to-do lists with a calendar: time-box traction activities (work, family, health, rest) in advance so anything outside…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 337
Aug 27, 2024 · 9 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky shares seven more practical productivity tactics following his popular time management post. The core argument is that small, concrete habits, such as arbitrary deadlines, physical to-do lists, graceful…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 322
Feb 6, 2024 · 9 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky compiles several lightweight decision-making frameworks, ordered from most to least structured, and explains when each fits best. He stresses that frameworks suit only high-stakes, one-way-door choices…
Lenny’s Podcast150 min
Jason Fried · Dec 17, 2023
Key learnings- Software businesses have very low physical costs, so bootstrapping can be practical; treat cash flow and profit as the core skill…
- Venture-scale is an outlier path; most viable businesses sit in the large space between small and unicorn, so consider whether…
- Keep teams small and products simple; Fried argues constraints and a single product offering prevent the complexity that comes…
Lenny’s Podcast133 min
Ryan Singer · Mar 30, 2025
Key learnings- Start from a fixed time budget (appetite) and shape a solution that fits it, rather than estimating a large idea and hoping it…
- Hold shaping sessions where product, design, and a senior engineer work together to sketch the idea and surface technical…
- Aim for a shaped idea describable in under about ten moving pieces; if it takes more, it likely isn't shaped well enough.