Growth & retention

The most important marketplace metrics to track

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…

Monetizing passions, scaling marketplaces, and stories from a creator economy vet

How GiveDirectly increased donations by over $3 million/year through experimentation

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…

1,000,000

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…

Choosing Your North Star Metric

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…

The most important bottom-up SaaS metrics to track (and how to best visualize them)

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…

Li Jin launches Atelier Ventures, her debut fund to invest in the passion economy

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…

How long it takes to find Product-Market Fit

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…

What is a good payback period?

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…

Why SaaS freemium playbooks don’t work in AI, and what to do instead

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…

It's Not Enough To Know What To Measure, You Also Need to Get The Time Increment Right

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…

Introducing DRICE: a modern prioritization framework

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…

How today’s top consumer brands measure marketing’s impact

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…

New data on the product job market

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…

How to activate your investor network

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…

Is Snapchat Going to Die?

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…

You should be playing with GPTs at work

Lenny Rachitsky argues that product and business teams should start experimenting with custom GPTs now, since AI tools are often dismissed as a fad or too complex. He explains what GPTs are, how to build one by…

Read Lean Analytics

Teresa Torres reviews Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll and Ben Yoskovitz and argues it is an essential, accessible guide to product and startup analytics. She notes it covers the basics of good metrics and segments…

Help Prevent User Abuse

Cagan argues that 'user abuse' happens when product teams ship changes that users didn't ask for, didn't expect, or can't absorb, and that it is largely caused by the natural human resistance to change. He explains that…

How To Run an A/B Test

Teresa Torres argues that A/B testing should follow the scientific method rather than being used for trivial tweaks like button colors or wording. She recommends starting from a real insight about why recipients ignore…

How to successfully launch on Product Hunt (when it’s right for your startup)

The post argues that a Product Hunt launch is worth the heavy time investment only for the right product and goals, and outlines seven tactics for a strong launch alongside five common myths. It frames…

Hot takes and techno-optimism from tech’s top power couple