Marty Cagan argues that the biggest risk facing most startups and new products is not market risk or business-model risk but solution risk: whether the team can find an approach customers actually choose to buy and use…
Bobby Pinero, CEO of Equals, recounts how adding a freemium plan and removing onboarding friction initially spiked user counts but then stalled engagement, retention, and revenue. The team reversed course by…
Shreyas Doshi describes a founder asking whether to go wide or deep, and argues that abstract framings like this feel productive but avoid the decision. The core advice is to push past comfortable generalities toward…
Marty Cagan argues that product companies can learn a great deal from venture capital firms, which are also in the business of making product investments and maximizing returns. He contrasts VC practices with typical…
Marty Cagan argues that the best products often emerge during economic downturns, when companies lack the money to paper over weak products. He contends that many firms, especially those with abundant funding, assume…
Lenny Rachitsky shares advice, drawn from researcher Matt Gallivan, on which questions to ask users to judge product-market fit. He recommends a survey for 100+ active users and interviews for smaller bases, while…
Marty Cagan argues that great product companies require genuine passion for a long-term vision, not just the pursuit of a quick hit. He observes a renewed 'product frenzy' fueled by mobile, where building an app is…
“It’s easy to be fooled by the Facebooks and the Googles of the world. Everyone uses their products. They make it easy to rationalize why everyone will use your product. But when you draw this conclusion, you skip right from A to Z, ignoring all the steps they took”
Lenny Rachitsky closes his eight-part marketplace growth series by asking founders and operators what they would do differently. The answers cluster around a few recurring regrets: spreading effort too thin instead of…
The 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…
This is Part 4 of Lenny Rachitsky's marketplace series, focused on driving initial demand after supply is underway. It argues that the timing of investing in demand depends on product-market fit, where growth comes…
Lenny Rachitsky expands his Racecar Growth Framework, breaking a startup's growth into a self-sustaining growth engine, kickstarts for early users, turbo boosts for temporary surges, lubricants for efficiency, mid-stage…
Pete Kazanjy argues that bottom-up, self-serve B2B products should eventually layer in a direct sales motion, since waiting too long creates large opportunity costs and lets competitors capture enterprise segments. He…
Teresa Torres surveys how early-stage teams recruit interviewees when they have no customers or even no product yet, a common blocker to continuous discovery. She draws on members of her Continuous Discovery Habits…
Marty Cagan, drawing on a conversation with venture capitalist Josh Kopelman, argues that business plans are wrong almost as soon as they are written. Competition, technology, and market dynamics constantly shift, and…
Marty Cagan argues that the founders of many of the world's most successful high-tech companies, such as Gates, Jobs, Bezos and Page, were effectively product managers in the best sense. They identified opportunities…
Lenny explains first-principles thinking as a beginner's-mind method: question assumptions, dig to the source, and rebuild problems from fundamental truths instead of copying analogies. He illustrates it with examples…
Teresa Torres argues that the MVP is widely misunderstood and that getting it right is critical for product teams. Instead of letting build time drive priorities, she suggests distilling a big, ideal idea into the…
Shreyas Doshi argues that founders and senior leaders in high-leverage roles benefit from clearly identifying what they are really selling, meaning the core value or outcome their product or leadership delivers beneath…
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…
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…
Marty Cagan compares working at small startups versus large companies, a question he is often asked by people weighing career moves. He draws on experience across company sizes from brand-new startups to firms with over…
The post answers a founder's question about hiring difficulty by synthesizing advice from several early-stage founders who consistently attract strong talent. It argues that hiring success comes from a compelling…
Lenny Rachitsky previews Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky's upcoming book Click and their new two-day Foundation Sprint for launching big projects. The post traces the origin of the approach to the Google Meet story and…