Lenny explains what investors mean by a "venture-scale" startup: a credible path to roughly $100M in annual revenue and a $1B+ valuation within about a decade. He argues most ideas, including many successful products…
“Hello and welcome to another edition of my weekly newsletter! My name is Lenny, and each week I tackle reader questions about building product, driving growth, working with humans, and anything else that’s stressing you out at the office. Send me your questions (just reply to this email or DM me) and in return I’ll humbly share actionable free real-talk advice. 🤝 Q: I was wondering if you had any advice for building referral programs…”
Lenny Rachitsky reports first results from a compensation survey of about 5,000 newsletter readers, finding that 75% prioritize salary over equity during negotiations. The post argues this reflects a desire for…
Marty Cagan argues that many product teams, both in startups and established companies, spend most of their effort capturing value (pricing tests, ad optimization, cost cutting) rather than creating it. Startups often…
Teresa Torres recounts meeting a fitness-trainer founder at a startup pitch event whose customer definition was vague and whose validation relied on survey answers about hypothetical future purchases. She argues that…
Marty Cagan argues that 'specials'—large customer or partner deals that come with a condition to build exactly what they request—can derail a product company. Although the cash is tempting, especially for cash-strapped…
Cagan argues that many product managers, especially those coming from engineering, have only a shallow grasp of how their product and company make money. He recommends cultivating a relationship with someone in the…
Teresa Torres reviews how her coaching business has changed and lays out her plans for 2022. She explains that her main goal is to get more product trios adopting continuous discovery, but that this impact is hard to…
A 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…
Product teams often face a flood of feature requests from support and sales, and it is hard to tell which ones deserve engineering time. Perri argues that a single question, asking how much revenue a request will…
Marty Cagan argues that a product team's primary scorecard metric should change depending on the stage the product is in. He describes three stages: MVP, where the only goal is winning several happy, referenceable…
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader's question about which metrics matter for a consumer app, arguing the right metrics depend on how the business makes money. He walks through five consumer models (trial-based…
Teresa Torres argues that great product management means thinking from the whole business's perspective: a product must not only please customers but also earn money from them, which is the hardest part. She recommends…
Hiten Shah traces how Square went from a 2009 idea born of a lost glassblowing sale to a company valued in the billions, by solving the costly problem of card acceptance for small businesses. He highlights the simple…
Lenny 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…
Jason Fried announces Fizzy, a new kanban-style card-and-column tool from the team behind Basecamp. He argues that popular issue-tracking tools like Trello, Jira, and Asana have grown bloated and complicated, drifting…
Marty Cagan argues that the product industry needs more skilled product coaches, and that many self-described coaches lack real product experience. He insists that effective product coaching must rest on relevant…
Lenny Rachitsky and growth advisor Yuriy Timen ran a benchmarking survey of over 500 product teams to answer what counts as a good activation rate. The article defines activation as the share of new users who reach a…
Teresa Torres argues that B2B and B2C discovery are less different than people assume, since most consumer products also serve multiple stakeholders such as advertisers or content providers. The key issue in enterprise…
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…
Teresa Torres and Petra Wille discuss the practical pain of global invoicing and EU tax compliance for small international online businesses. They argue that platforms and product teams often miss small regulatory…
Lenny Rachitsky explains why marketplaces fail, drawing on dozens of failed examples. He argues the core causes mirror any startup: lacking product-market fit on demand or supply, poor liquidity, weak unit economics…
Marty Cagan argues that the true measure of a product manager is the success of their product, but that picking the right success metric is hard. He proposes the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which asks customers how likely…
Lenny Rachitsky reviews more than 140 of his angel investments, sharing seven surprises, a practical path into angel investing, and his startup evaluation criteria. His core argument is that access to good deals and a…