Lenny’s Podcast107 min
Luc Levesque · Jun 15, 2023
Key learnings- Focus relentlessly on impact over activity: measure outcomes against the north-star metric rather than hours worked or work…
- Hire the top 1% by looking for repeated 'signs of excellence' in a candidate's history, such as multiple standout achievements…
- Recruit with the whole executive team and involve the candidate's spouse or family, since changing companies is a family…
Lenny’s Podcast114 min
Austin Hay · Aug 13, 2023
Key learnings- MarTech treats the marketing systems and platforms, both third-party and first-party, as products, and centers on people and…
- A dedicated systems or MarTech owner usually becomes necessary somewhere around 100 to 150 people, when a village approach to…
- Pick tools to solve specific problems, and combine buying a tool for most of the solution with building the remaining custom…
Lenny’s Podcast110 min
Sahil Mansuri · Dec 4, 2022
Key learnings- Plan next year conservatively, but set short-term checkpoints (e.g., Q1 revenue targets) that unlock extra spend or trigger…
- Avoid founder optimism bias in forecasts; predetermine what decisions will follow from hitting or missing each milestone.
- Rethink sales comp so reps are rewarded for renewals, retention and customer quality, not just new bookings, since current plans…
Product Talk · Teresa TorresMar 4, 2013
Mar 4, 2013 · 5 min
“It's not enough to just design a good email template. You also have to put in the work to make sure your email gets delivered. Fortunately, there are a lot of great services to help make this happen. Understand Email Deliverability First, let's go over how your email”
Lenny’s Podcast86 min
Annie Pearl · Feb 26, 2023
Key learnings- When sharing a scheduling link, first invite the other person to share their availability, and paste your open times directly…
- Break into product via internal transfer: show curiosity, help with product work on the side, and build relationships with PMs…
- Start from a clear product strategy that defines where you play and where you don't, including the markets, segments, and…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 17
Dec 15, 2020 · 16 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyBrian Ta, a former SEO lead at Airbnb, Strava, and AngelList, explains how to run SEO experiments on sites with thousands of programmatic pages. He argues SEO tests must be bucketed at the page level rather than the…
Lenny’s Podcast110 min
Shaun Clowes · Dec 29, 2024
Key learnings- Start every document from the customer, market, and competitor perspective rather than internal execution, since…
- Right-size qualitative research: interview roughly 7 to 14 people, because fewer gives too little signal and more stops yielding…
- Use LLMs to hunt for where your strategy doesn't fit customer feedback, not to confirm what you already believe, and to infer…
HEY World · Jason FriedAug 26, 2026
Aug 26, 2026
Jason Fried describes an experiment for a free in-person Basecamp event in Chicago: attendees pay a $100 refundable deposit at registration and get the cash back at the door if they show up. The problem is that free…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 45
Dec 17, 2019 · 13 min
This post, part three of a marketplace series, lays out ten strategies that leaders at large marketplaces such as Airbnb, Uber, DoorDash, Etsy and Lyft use to protect service quality as they scale. The most common…
Lenny’s Podcast72 min
Naomi Ionita · Jan 12, 2023
Key learnings- Don't set pricing once and forget it; treat it like the roadmap and revisit monetization every 6 to 12 months, especially when…
- Start monetizing earlier than feels comfortable, since delaying cheapens the product, removes pricing feedback loops, and creates…
- Match price to value by choosing a value metric tied to how users get value, so revenue grows naturally as usage increases.
Lenny’s Podcast104 min
Benjamin Lauzier · Sep 29, 2024
Key learnings- Before reaching product-market fit, avoid marketplace mechanics and focus on delivering core value to one side of the marketplace.
- Pick the hardest side to grow, which is usually supply, and find a hack or existing channel to jumpstart it before worrying about…
- Measure liquidity as the share of intentful demand that converts, and track a market health metric like ETA that predicts it.
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 297
Jan 20, 2026 · 20 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyColin Matthews explains that ChatGPT apps let third-party tools surface interactive widgets inside conversations, creating a potentially major distribution channel. The post covers how users discover apps contextually…
produxlabs.com · Melissa PerriMar 27, 2020
Mar 27, 2020 · 6 min
Melissa Perri shares advice gathered from experienced operators on what product leaders should prioritize during the COVID-19 crisis. Her core argument is that survival comes first: preserve cash, shift the roadmap…
Product Talk · Teresa TorresOct 19, 2022
Oct 19, 2022 · 12 min
Grailed's Discovery team spent eight months building a curated feed that barely moved the business. After adopting continuous discovery habits and an opportunity solution tree, they reframed the problem in customer…
Lenny’s Podcast90 min
Tim Holley · Sep 3, 2023
Key learnings- Make one north-star KPI, such as gross merchandise sales, the drumbeat of every meeting and the yardstick for judging launches.
- Repeat the company narrative relentlessly; Tim suggests people need to hear it several more times than you'd expect before they…
- Benchmark against the broader set of places buyers spend money, not just direct marketplace competitors, to ground prioritization…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 326
Sep 12, 2023 · 35 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyPart 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’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 15
Feb 4, 2020 · 6 min
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…
produxlabs.com · Melissa PerriJan 2, 2020
Jan 2, 2020 · 5 min
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…
Lenny’s Podcast116 min
Noah Weiss · Jul 23, 2023
Key learnings- Distill company-level product taste into a shared set of principles so teams can self-evaluate and founders are not the sole…
- Involve founders early for strategy, goals and anti-goals, then again at the end to taste the product, and keep iterating in…
- Run complaint storms by critiquing adjacent products' customer journeys first, which builds calibration and fresh empathy before…
Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 203
May 2, 2023 · 16 min
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…
HEY World · Jason FriedAug 27, 2026
Aug 27, 2026
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…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 8
Dec 4, 2020 · 18 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyA 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’s Newsletter♥ 34
Mar 8, 2022 · 9 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny 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’s Podcast82 min
Noam Lovinsky · Mar 17, 2024
Key learnings- Advocate for what is best for the business even when it means shutting down your own project; in healthy organizations, that…
- Don't hesitate to ask for a different reporting structure if it will make you more productive; Noam layered himself under a peer…
- Set guiding principles for trade-offs, such as serving customers first, then supply, then the company, to resolve thorny…