Lenny walks through how his Airbnb team turned a problem of rejected booking requests into an 'Instant Book' strategy that grew instant bookings from about 5% to over 80%. He breaks strategy into three steps…
April Dunford gives a practical guide to product positioning, using a story about a mispositioned database product to show how context shapes customer assumptions. She argues positioning should be built by starting from…
Lenny Rachitsky explains how mission, vision, strategy, goals, roadmap, and tasks connect, working from the top down and showing where to begin. He illustrates each layer with well-known company examples and uses a…
““The only thing that matters is getting to product-market fit.” —Marc Andreessen I’ve noticed that most people (including myself) have only a vague grasp on what product-market fit actually is. And even fewer people are going after it in a systematic way. For my own benefit if nothing else, last year I began collecting the best descriptions of PMF that I could find across Twitter, podcasts, books, and blog posts. Below, I’ve put…”
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…
This edition of Lenny Rachitsky's newsletter answers a reader question by curating his favorite product management templates and frameworks in one place. The collection spans 1-pagers and PRDs, business and team…
Lenny Rachitsky reflects on seven years at Airbnb, from early engineer to PM, distilling lessons on building a company. He argues that strong culture and values create competitive advantage in hiring, speed, and…
An interview with Shopify's VP of Product, Glen Coates, on how the company plans around annual CEO themes, avoids OKR-style metrics ownership, reviews work through a staged system, and structures teams around merchant…
Sho Kuwamoto, Figma's VP of Product, argues that Figma's success comes from putting customer needs first, a philosophy built into its culture from the early private beta. He describes how customer support became…
Lenny answers a reader's question about how to build a business 'flywheel,' a visual model of which business elements reinforce each other to accelerate growth. He explains how to brainstorm one from assets, actions…
Lenny Rachitsky opens a seven-part B2B startup playbook by examining how successful B2B companies found their original ideas. Drawing on dozens of founder interviews, he argues that a strong B2B idea combines an…
Lenny Rachitsky asked founders of about two dozen well-known companies when they first knew they had product-market fit. Every company had a recognizable moment, but many only saw it after months or years of compounding…
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…
Marty Cagan argues that organizations believe they are good at focus but usually chase 20-30 'critical' initiatives when only two or three truly matter. He contrasts this with Pandora's stakeholder-driven prioritization…
Jackie Bavaro, drawing on research for her book Cracking the PM Career, argues that the hardest career step for many product managers is progressing from entry-level to senior PM, typically taking around three years…
This essay, the third in a series on meaningful transformation, argues that companies must change how they choose which problems to solve, not just how they build or solve them. It moves beyond feature roadmaps toward…
Marty Cagan argues that empowered product teams need hard problems to solve, and product strategy is the discipline of deciding which problems matter. He observes that many companies have plenty of features and projects…
Marty Cagan argues that the insights forming the foundation of a product strategy are the hardest but most valuable part of product work, and they cannot be produced by a template or framework. He says strong insights…
Teresa Torres argues that great products depend on a clear vision, which she treats as one of three pillars alongside sound decision making and building the right team. Product teams often assume alignment that doesn't…
Marty Cagan revisits the foundational product-management ideas he publicly argued for over the past two decades and identifies ten significant mistakes or blind spots. He concludes that his earlier emphasis on…
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…
Lenny's paid guest post by April Dunford, a positioning expert who has worked with 300+ B2B companies, covers four advanced roadblocks that derail positioning work. It argues that disagreement over competitors, product…
Teresa Torres and Petra Wille argue that many organizations do not have a clearly written product strategy, and that the strategy actually in play is often implicit and revealed by what teams build and learn. They…
Marty Cagan answers common follow-up questions about product vision, clarifying how it differs from a roadmap and how it should be scoped, owned, detailed and maintained. He argues a vision should describe a desired end…