Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 1,602
Sep 11, 2023 · 11 min
“This week the newsletter hit 500,000 subscribers, which I’m told makes it among the top five largest newsletters on Substack and one of the largest newsletters broadly. Friggin’ bonkers. A big round number is a good time to reflect, so I’ve collected some lessons from my journey. I still only sort of know what I’m doing, and it’s unclear where this all goes, but if you’re thinking about embarking on a writing journey, or are just…”
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 105
Nov 9, 2021 · 15 min
Elena Verna argues that a founder's first growth hire is one of the most consequential hires a startup makes, and that many founders begin with avoidable mistakes. She proposes six rules: define a growth model before…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 92
Nov 30, 2021 · 32 min
David Spinks argues that community is a structure for creating value by helping people help each other, which can scale a product's impact with a small team. Before investing, founders should align community to a…
Lenny’s Podcast97 min
Ethan Smith · Sep 14, 2025
Key learnings- Everything that works in traditional SEO also works for AEO, so start with landing pages targeting high-volume keywords before…
- In LLM answers you win by being mentioned across many citations, not by ranking first, so pursue multiple third-party mentions…
- Early-stage companies can win in AEO quickly, since a single citation from a Reddit thread, YouTube video, or blog can get you…
Lenny’s Podcast148 min
Amol Avasare · Apr 5, 2026
Key learnings- Expect most growth time to go to 'success disasters' once growth is rapid; firefighting breaking systems matters as much as new…
- In AI-first products, skew the growth portfolio toward larger swings, since future product value could be orders of magnitude…
- Treat activation as a top lever in AI products: identify user traits that predict which feature fits them, then guide them there.
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 60
Jun 8, 2021 · 10 min
Lenny Rachitsky argues that people learn about new products through seven distinct channels, split by whether they encounter the product online, out in the world, or at home, and whether the exposure is organic or paid…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 129
Aug 16, 2022 · 24 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyStep 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…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 356
Dec 17, 2024 · 9 min
This is Lenny Rachitsky's year-end roundup of his newsletter and podcast, organized as a curated guide to his best content by the problem a reader wants solved. Rather than a single argument, it is a directory: it…
Lenny’s Podcast76 min
Lauryn Isford · Feb 12, 2023
Key learnings- Experiment when you need to, mainly as risk mitigation for big changes; let customer research and mockups provide conviction for…
- Onboarding is a critical choke point for self-serve products because downstream conversion, deal closing, and team-wide adoption…
- For complex products, an immersive guided wizard that reduces cognitive load can outperform tooltips; tooltips still have a place…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 41
Feb 2, 2021 · 13 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyThe post answers how to increase a product's virality, first arguing that virality should only be a primary growth engine when the product naturally suits it, versus performance marketing, content, or sales. It defines…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 30
Nov 17, 2020 · 10 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky catalogs over thirty examples of 'magical growth loops,' where new users come mainly from existing users rather than paid acquisition. He groups them into four types: supply driving demand, demand…
Lenny’s Podcast164 min
Grant Lee · Nov 13, 2025
Key learnings- Treat product-market fit as a real word-of-mouth engine: if over half of new signups come from organic sharing, the core growth…
- Make the first 30 seconds of the product magical, focusing on one clear 'egg' of value rather than many features, so new users…
- Practice founder-led marketing: write provocative but useful posts, share learnings regularly, and build credibility by giving…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 60
Oct 12, 2021 · 15 min
This guest-written issue, drawn from Ali Abouelatta's First 1000 research, catalogs 60 examples of 'Turbo Boosts,' one-off events that temporarily accelerate growth. It frames them as the fuel-like components of a…
Lenny’s Podcast90 min
Camille Ricketts · Dec 11, 2022
Key learnings- Treat content like a product: define who the audience is and what painful job they need done before creating anything.
- Community-led growth works best when the product creates something users want to share, such as templates or creative workspaces.
- Measure brand discovery with net new visitors to your site month over month, rather than starting with rigid community ROI…
Lenny’s Podcast94 min
Archie Abrams · Nov 7, 2024
Key learnings- Optimize for the absolute number of people reaching each funnel stage, not local conversion rates, since rate-chasing teams often…
- Judge growth by the total long-term value of a merchant cohort (cumulative GMV over several years) rather than per-merchant or…
- Keep long-term holdouts and revisit experiments at 3, 6, 12, and 24 months, because many short-term wins fade and some neutral…
Lenny’s Podcast106 min
Hila Qu · Apr 2, 2023
Key learnings- Treat PLG as data-led growth: free products should yield broader reach plus usage data showing which features correlate with…
- Most companies end up running both PLG and sales motions; start PLG early because retrofitting it into a sales-led organization…
- Commit for a year or two and don't mistake simply opening a free trial for a PLG strategy; it requires redesigning activation…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 181
Mar 28, 2023 · 15 min
Kyle Poyar argues that product-led growth (PLG) only works economically if customer acquisition cost stays near zero, roughly under $1 per unique website visitor. Using OpenView benchmark funnel math, he shows that a…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 171
Nov 25, 2019 · 13 min
This third installment of a marketplace growth series examines how leading marketplaces bootstrapped their initial supply, which is the side that most marketplaces remain constrained on. Drawing on interviews with…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 18
Jul 28, 2020 · 21 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyThis post examines how fast-growing B2B startups converted their first users into paying customers, grouping them into three early sales motions: bottom-up self-service, bottom-up with inside sales, and outbound…
Lenny’s Podcast76 min
Scott Belsky · May 18, 2023
Key learnings- Build product sense by developing genuine empathy for the customer's problem before getting attached to a particular solution…
- Optimize the first mile of the experience: users arrive lazy, selfish, and impatient, so onboarding, orientation, and defaults…
- Re-examine onboarding for each new customer cohort, since later pragmatist users are less forgiving and need a reimagined…
Lenny’s Podcast99 min
Meltem Kuran · Aug 27, 2023
Key learnings- Start growth with cheap channels: monitor communities like Reddit, Quora, and Twitter for people asking questions you can answer…
- Before spending on paid ads, make sure the fundamentals work: a fast website, discoverability in search engines, and clear…
- For SEO, aim for content that fully answers the search so users don't need to return to Google; avoid keyword stuffing and…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 234
Mar 14, 2023 · 7 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyA practical brainstorming list of growth tactics organized by funnel stage and team area: top-of-funnel acquisition (short and long term), monetization, conversion and activation, retention, and team velocity. The post…
Lenny’s Podcast74 min
Yuriy Timen · Sep 1, 2022
Key learnings- Give every channel a real test before judging it; many teams wrongly conclude YouTube or other tactics don't work because they…
- Virality works best when the product has inherent network effects, where utility grows with more users, rather than trying to…
- Treat SEO as a 3-month time-boxed experiment, favoring angles with a unique editorial, programmatic, or data advantage, and buy a…
Lenny’s Podcast95 min
Nilan Peiris · Sep 24, 2023
Key learnings- Measure word of mouth by simply asking new customers how they heard about you and overlaying that on attribution and…
- Use NPS as a proxy for viral potential: moving promoters up the scale roughly doubles how many people each customer refers, so…
- Read the verbatim NPS comments company-wide; Wise found customers repeatedly asked for lower prices, faster transfers, and easier…