“What do your customers care about? This seems like a simple enough question, but many product teams struggle to answer it honestly. Often the first instinct is to frame an answer in terms of what your business cares about. But remember: Your customers don’t care about your business outcomes.”
Part five of a B2B startup series argues there is no formula for product-market fit, but founders' stories reveal a pattern. It proposes a five-step progression from one loving customer, to a paying customer, to…
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader's question about taking a marketplace business international, drawing on advice from two former Airbnb leaders who built its European business. The piece argues that expansion…
Melissa Perri and Kevin Broom argue that SaaS companies chasing net retention above 100% through land-and-expand can clash with customers who believe their subscription already covers new features. Using fast food menus…
Guest author Olga Berezovsky explains the difference between correlation and linear regression analysis for product teams. Correlation measures how strongly two variables move together on a scale from -1 to 1, and is a…
Jason Fried reports the results of an experiment where a free event charged a refundable $100 admission, returned at the door to attendees who showed up. Of 55 paid signups, 50 attended, a 90% show rate, compared with…
A community digest from Lenny Rachitsky's paid newsletter covering a range of product and growth questions: SEO keyword prioritization and the debate over domain authority versus content, PM career ladder resources…
Lenny explains when a product should be free and how to choose between freemium and a free trial, based on an analysis of about 50 SaaS pricing models. He frames free as an acquisition strategy, either disrupting a…
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader question about growth and retention during the 2020 coronavirus downturn by compiling advice from growth operators, investors, and HBR. The core argument is that founders should first…
Lenny Rachitsky lays out the four metrics he considers most important for an early marketplace: fill rate, bookings growth, supply growth, and GMV growth. He explains why each matters, shares practitioner perspectives…
A guest post from GiveDirectly's team, shared alongside a Giving Tuesday fundraising appeal, walks through the experiments that raised roughly $3 million more in donations per year. It covers winning tests like faster…
Lenny Rachitsky marks his newsletter reaching one million subscribers by answering a mailbag of reader questions instead of making big announcements. He describes a small freelance team handling editing, podcast…
This is a short announcement newsletter pointing readers to a guest post Lenny Rachitsky wrote for a16z's Future site on choosing a North Star Metric. The guide draws on a survey of current and former employees at more…
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader's question about which metrics early-stage bottom-up SaaS founders should track beyond MRR, which tools they use, and how they visualize results. He draws on crowdsourced input and…
Lenny Rachitsky announces Atelier Ventures, the debut $13 million fund of Li Jin, who coined the 'passion economy' term in a 2019 essay. The fund backs platforms that broaden access to new forms of work, lower barriers…
The post asks how long marketplace startups take to reach product-market fit and answers by collecting founder accounts from companies like Lyft, DoorDash, Uber, and Airbnb. The core argument is that marketplaces take…
Lenny Rachitsky polls sixteen growth experts on what counts as a good customer payback period across B2C, SMB and enterprise businesses. The post explains how to calculate payback on a gross-profit basis, why it matters…
Lenny Rachitsky's guest author, a Google AI product leader, argues that the SaaS freemium playbook breaks down for AI products because each free request carries real compute cost. He proposes a modern AI paywall built…
Torres argues that all-time totals, like lifetime registered users, are rarely useful because they only go up and hide whether a product is improving or declining. The right measure depends on choosing a time increment…
The post introduces DRICE, a two-stage prioritization method for product and growth teams. It starts with RICE scoring (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) to build a shortlist, then applies a deeper 30-minute DRICE…
Guest authors Michael Kaminsky and Mike Taylor explain how marketers measure incrementality, the true sales caused by spend, using three methods: multi-touch attribution, marketing mix modeling, and conversion lift…
Lenny Rachitsky shares near-real-time U.S. job-market data on product and product-adjacent roles, gathered via a third-party data firm. The post argues that growth roles are expanding fastest, PM hiring has plateaued…
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…
This essay traces Snapchat's rise from a 2011 Stanford side project to a major social platform, and its subsequent stall after going public. The author argues Snapchat's early success came from turning a familiar…