Lenny’s Podcast81 min
Gia Laudi · Sep 29, 2022
Key learnings- Stop treating growth as ending at acquisition; for recurring-revenue businesses, retention, expansion and post-signup activation…
- Start by identifying your best customers: those who are happy, pay well, have an urgent problem, and signed up recently enough to…
- Survey recent best customers about the trigger moment, alternatives considered, must-haves, anxieties, and desired outcomes, then…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 389
Nov 11, 2025 · 15 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyThe post argues that as AI makes building and reaching customers easier for everyone, traditional B2B channels like search, outbound, events and lifecycle email are getting noisier and less effective. It makes the case…
Lenny’s Podcast128 min
Shishir Mehrotra · Aug 14, 2022
Key learnings- Map your product's growth as loops rather than linear funnels, and draw a diagram of how users bring in other users; Shishir says…
- Remove friction from the moment users share, as Coda did by charging only for document makers, not for people they share with.
- Treat publishing as a discovery channel: users who publish something useful for their niche can expose the product to new…
The Looking Glass podcastMar 11, 2026
Mar 11, 2026
Key learnings- Excellent growth teams look for opportunities that others in the organization tend to overlook, rather than only chasing the…
- Growth work at a marketplace like DoorDash requires balancing consumers, merchants, and dashers, so teams should consider the…
- Seven lessons framing suggests growth is treated as a repeatable discipline with distinct principles rather than a series of…
Lenny’s Podcast132 min
Gina Gotthilf · Oct 19, 2023
Key learnings- Anchor the company in a mission people can rally behind; it helps with organic growth, hiring, and resisting short-term…
- Keep growth lean and avoid paid acquisition early, since rising CAC and dependence on paid users can become an addiction that is…
- Focus relentlessly on retention by asking whether the product delivers real value; users who find real value stick around.
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 35
Jun 26, 2019 · 30 min
“Yesterday I was fortunate enough to be a guest contributor to Andrew Chen’s blog. The response has been amazing. Below I’ve included that entire post, along with a dozen bonus examples and tips that didn’t make it into the original post. My intention is to dive deeper into some of these tactics and strategies in future posts, so if there’s anything specific that you’d like to hear more about, I’d love to know. Tweet me or leave a…”
Lenny’s Podcast134 min
Claire Butler · Sep 7, 2023
Key learnings- Focus go-to-market on the individual contributors who use your product daily; their love and advocacy spread the product into…
- Keep the free tier generous, such as unlimited collaborators on a starter team, so teams can adopt and build confidence before…
- Early on, treat metrics as weak signal; look for a few users who love the product and are excited to play with it, rather than…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 13
May 26, 2020 · 6 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny answers a reader question on how to split effort across conversion levers (focus, motivation, friction) and which tends to pay off most. He shares rules of thumb such as starting wide, mining past wins, and mixing…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 27
Dec 13, 2019 · 8 min
This post, the second part of a marketplace growth series, examines which growth levers the largest marketplaces rely on once they move past early experimentation. Drawing on interviews with leaders from roughly…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 70
Aug 23, 2022 · 10 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny 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…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 93
May 17, 2022 · 20 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny 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…
Lenny’s Podcast145 min
Jason Cohen · Jan 25, 2026
Key learnings- Compute your growth ceiling: new customers added per month divided by monthly cancellation rate gives the maximum customer count…
- Ask 'what made you cancel?' rather than 'why did you cancel?' and use open-ended responses, since multiple-choice lists skew…
- Be skeptical of 'too expensive' as a cancellation reason; customers who already bought didn't find the price too high, so dig…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 16
Oct 6, 2020 · 8 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyA companion post to a First Round Review essay, built around an interview with Booking.com's former CMO Arthur Kosten. It lays out five lessons from Booking's early growth: letting performance marketing shape supply…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 121
Dec 5, 2023 · 18 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky profiles Saturn, a calendar-centered social app for high school students that became a top App Store performer. The post draws five lessons from its founders on building viral consumer social products…
Lenny’s Podcast114 min
Christopher Miller · Aug 10, 2023
Key learnings- Take ownership of problems nobody has claimed; a radical accountability mindset can surface opportunities the business hasn't…
- Prioritize relentless curiosity and resilience when hiring or growing as a PM, since most growth experiments fail and you need…
- Talk directly to customers and to non-customers; usage data shows what users do, but only qualitative conversations reveal why.
Lenny’s NewsletterJul 28, 2020
Jul 28, 2020 · 8 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyThe post examines how fast-growing B2B companies converted early free users into paying customers. It maps three early go-to-market strategies (bottom-up self-service, bottom-up with inside sales, and outbound sales)…
Lenny’s Podcast93 min
Sri Batchu · Jun 25, 2023
Key learnings- Sequence B2B growth roughly as founder-led sales, first salespeople, low-cost targeted marketing like content and community, then…
- Use early investor and founder relationships as a growth channel: getting influential operators onto the cap table can drive word…
- Make every growth channel driven by technology and data, such as dedicated growth engineers automating sales workflows and…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 85
Dec 9, 2021 · 10 min
This excerpt from Andrew Chen's book argues that networked products should first build a small, self-sustaining 'atomic network' before expanding. The atomic network is the smallest unit that can stand on its own, and…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 147
Jan 3, 2023 · 17 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny 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’s Podcast102 min
Patrick Campbell · Feb 19, 2023
Key learnings- Define your values by the trade-offs they force, and assess candidates against them during interviews so misfits are filtered out…
- Ask whether your business can plausibly reach around $1 billion in annual revenue; if not, bootstrapping or building a…
- Campbell argues ProfitWell should have raised money earlier, since it could have pursued a larger outcome sooner, so match…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 25
Jun 22, 2021 · 9 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyThe post argues that distribution, not product alone, separates startups that succeed from those that fail, and that a unique distribution advantage is needed to reach audiences more cheaply than competitors. It lays…
producthabits.com · Hiten ShahNov 25, 2018
Nov 25, 2018 · 20 min
This case study traces how theSkimm, a daily email news digest aimed at young millennial women, grew to roughly 7 million subscribers despite a crowded and hostile media market. The founders bet on a routine-based…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 86
Feb 8, 2022 · 10 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky benchmarks what counts as good and great monthly SaaS churn, drawing on growth leaders and ProfitWell data across B2C, SMB/mid-market, and enterprise segments. He argues churn should be read by price…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 51
Sep 17, 2021 · 13 min
Behavioral scientist Kristen Berman argues that people often act against their own intentions, and that behavioral design, which blends psychology and economics, can help product teams close the gap between intent and…