Lenny's Newsletter

> I would like to learn more about product development and strategy. Subscribe to Lenny's Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com?r=2vq60 That's my referral link, but you can strip it if you want. Lenny is an old friend, but more importantly, is considered the expert on product development and strategy. He headed up part of product at AirBnB for a long time, and he gets guests that have headed up product at equally well known places.

3 that I always watch for: - Lenny's newsletter. While lately it's become mostly about how to succeed as a PM in Big Tech, he occasionally covers juicy startup tactics. For example, "What is good retention?" was solid gold. - Casey Newton's Platformer. Balanced and insightful coverage of breaking industry news - Data Analysis Journal. Goes deep on many growth topics, with tons of real SQL code from an experienced practitioner, which is extremely hard to find. https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/ https://www.platformer.news/ https://dataanalysis.substack.com/

https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-new-ai-growth-playbook-for-2026… worth the listen. They hit profitability because of their power users, who are a mixed bag of complete novices and expert SWE's, both of whom spend 10x+ the tokens of the average user. So, basically, their value prop and pricing have hit a sweet spot for a certain marketshare.

VC Mike Maples of Floodgate recently wrote a new book on a tangential topic. The founders of the best companies he's invested in (Twitch, Lyft, Twitter) don't mind being perceived as outsiders. They're confidently living in some future state that the rest of the world hasn't caught up to yet. He calls this quality "disagreeableness", but it could also be described as a comfort with being unique. If a desire for that quality is decreasing, does it make it harder or easier to bring innovative new ideas to market? https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-find-a-great-startup-idea-mi…

Some of the ones I follow: - Mr. Money Mustache for financial independence and lifestyle: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ - Quastor for large-scale engineering: https://www.quastor.org/ - Krebs for IT security: https://krebsonsecurity.com/ - Lenny's newsletter for product development: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/ - Psychotactics for marketing: https://www.psychotactics.com/ - CTO craft for CTOs: https://ctocraft.com/ - AI and Machine Learning: https://aiweekly.co/ - Programming news: https://www.programmerweekly.com/ - Startups and tech: https://tldr.tech/ - IT engineering trends: https://www.infoq.com/ - For startup founders: http://www.founderweekly.com/

https://productivegrowth.substack.com/ For productivity, personal growth and process building. Basically all things to help make you 1% better every day and a few things about management https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/ For all things product management

Great something I can comment on; Here's the links I think you might found useful - They're not books, but videos, newsletters and articles. - - https://producthabits.com/ - https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/ - https://www.ycombinator.com/library/?categories=Product - https://twitter.com/shreyas (Read this guys tweets) - https://www.sachinrekhi.com/ - https://coda.io/@yuhki/figmas-approach-to-product-requirement-docs (And lastly CODA library, there are a lot of PM docs over here which explains how companies like Figma manage their PRD, just copy the process and simplfy it. Don't use them how they use like. Why? Because you don't need that complicated process w/ 6 people) In terms of books, there are only few great ones like; - Hooked by Nir Eyal - Inspired by Marty Cagan - Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman (Not a PM book but you should read as a PM)

Product Management always seems like a logical step for technical people on the surface but the reality is different for your average engineer and their skill set/personality type. This is a great read on switching. https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-get-into-product-management

Based on public exit and liquidity event information, startups still remain a lottery ticket for most. 90% of startups fail entirely, for example (CB Insights). YC startups have more longevity, and more get to a Series A then non YC startups, but the best batches based on performance have been between 2009 and 2013. 10% achieve an exit, 4.5% became unicorns. Only 17 companies backed by YC (out of almost 5k) have gone public, and all except Airbnb, Instacart, and Reddit have underperformed post IPO. Have fun, learn, develop and grow your skills and network, take the investment, but it’s important to be honest with one’s self about odds of success and outcome. If you win, respect and appreciate the lottery ticket for what it was. Hard work and years of grinding is table stakes, but you can still fail (and most do). https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/pulling-back-the-curtain-on-the-mag… https://www.marketsentiment.co/p/the-yc-report

> Firstly, if your prior is that every previous startup failed, what does that say about your future chances of success? The prior is the market. It isn't sane to use your own prior experience. (Works both ways -- if your last startup did great, shouldn't assume next will). > 4% of YC companies become unicorns. How many startups do you need to work for before you become part of the 4%? That number is not a feasible number of jobs for one lifetime. The bar (and what the model is calculating) is Series A from top VC, not YC Seed funding. That significantly increases odds. Specifically, ~45% YC companies get Series A, so it's more like 10% chance of a YC Series A funded company becoming a unicorn (https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/pulling-back-the-curtain-on-the-mag… Model is change jobs every 18 months if not booming. A 1 in 10 chance is quite reasonable over a career. I agree there is an issue with the event being too rare, but you can't just look only at modal returns. 2/3 chance of $0 (the modal return) and 1/3 chance of $10 million profit is still pretty good odds to work with.

Slightly tangential, but I've been watching Duolingo go down this road for the past few years since one of Zynga's product people became their head of product. Duolingo was never the best way to learn a language, but it's increasingly become essentially useless as an educational tool as they push for more and more revenue from their "whales". Every aspect of the experience is shaped towards manipulating people into "engaging" for longer and keeping them coming back, ostensibly to make learning more effective but in practice at the expense of learning. This blog post by their head of product is a great example of the problems in the industry—he talks gleefully about all the manipulative techniques he pulled in from Zynga, and doesn't seem to have any clue that he's sacrificed the mission in pursuit of relentless growth. https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-duolingo-reignited-user-growth

> Might be wrong, but brief review of this appears to show the “thesis” of PriceOps is yield-based metered feature pricing The "thesis" of PriceOps is less "you must have metered feature pricing", and more "you should design your infrastructure so that you can learn from and adjust pricing in the future". In other words, expect that your product, customers, and landscape will change, and understand that the pricing scheme (ie, what you charge for, how much you charge, and how you bundle prices into a packaged plan) will almost certainly need to change as well. > Do you have an related research to link to? Here's a selection of links to check out if you're interested in learning more about this subject. I haven't carefully reviewed each one of these to make sure they're 100% what you're asking for, but they're all things I've read and found helpful studying this topic, and many have links to more research and primary sources. Hope you find it helpful :) On unlocking growth with pricing: https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/11/turn-your-startups-pricing-strategy-… https://www.nfx.com/post/the-hidden-world-of-pricing https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/saas-pricing-strategy https://www.bvp.com/atlas/why-pricing-deserves-as-much-iteration-as-pr… More from BVP, this pricing course is amazing btw, I highly recommend checking it…

This is a good example: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-openclaw-changed-my-life-claire…

~ Coding is largely a solved problem, and 100% of his code has been written by Claude since November. https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/head-of-claude-code-what-happens As for others, Microsoft is saying they’re porting all C/C++ code to Rust with a goal of 1m LOC per engineer per month. This would largely be done with AI. https://www.thurrott.com/dev/330980/microsoft-to-replace-all-c-c-code-… If coding is a solved problem and there is no need to write code, does the language really matter at that point? If 1 engineer can handle 1m LOC per month, how big would these desktop apps be where maintaining native code becomes a problem?

They did, with the caveat that its solved" for most use cases". https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/head-of-claude-code-what-happens

Head of Claude Code at Anthropic 3 days ago: "Coding is largely solved" https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/head-of-claude-code-what-happens

Tests are called "evals" (evaluations) in the AI product development world. Basically you let humans review LLM output or feed it to another LLM with instructions how to evaluate it. https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/beyond-vibe-checks-a-pms-complete

From the founder himself: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-base44-bootstrapped-startup-suc…

Not OpenAI, but Anthropic CPO Mike Krieger said in response to a question of how much of Claude Code is written by Claude Code: "At this point, I would be shocked if it wasn't 95% plus. I'd have to ask Boris and the other tech leads on there." [0] https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-cpo-heres-what-comes-nex…

Good post from Lenny Rachitsky on how to acquire your first users https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/consumer-business-find-first-users

You might find this blogpost eye opening: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/pulling-back-the-curtain-on-the-mag…

Interview with Chesky. Talks about this around -57 https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/brian-cheskys-contrarian-approach

Most of what I read actually referenced 20% as an average for paid waitlists if there’s a fast enough turnaround behind a release. Here’s one example: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/what-is-good-waitlist-conversion Obviously not without proper diligence!

Read this: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-todays-fastest-growing-b2b-busi… In general, personal connections or cold outreach online or offline.

Read this and you'll realize why Duolingo has gone down the wayside https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-duolingo-reignited-user-growth Shows when incentives are aligned to shareholders vs users, that is the outcome you get

https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-todays-fastest-growing-b2b-busi… https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-the-biggest-consumer-apps-got

Apparently he wrote two articles on this, the second of which is paywalled: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-todays-fastest-growing-b2b-busi… https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-todays-fastest-growing-b2b-star…

Here are some ideas, in no particular order: - Find relevant subreddits on Reddit and post about the tool in an authentic way (not promotional, but a "here's what I built" style). - Do a Show HN. Look at other people's successful ones to get an idea of the tone/style that works. - ProductHunt (read this for suggestions on how to do it well: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-successfully-launch-on-produ… - Content marketing: do SEO keyword research and create pages/posts that target promising keywords. This product in particular probably has a lot of potential with this strategy, since you can use the tool itself to create interesting content which also shows off the features. - YouTube: similar to above, but find relevant videos from other creators that are doing well and try to create your own videos in a similar style, looping in the product where it makes sense. Like with reddit and HN, better to be authentic and not promotional. - Media: reach out to popular blogs and publications that cover learning tools. If you have any cash available to invest (even a small amount), you can also try: - Reach out to influencers on YouTube, X, TikTok, etc. either directly or via promotion marketplaces. You'll likely have to pay, but it can be high ROI since you already have a paid plan. - Similarly, you can try ads on reddit, adwords, facebook, X, etc. and see if any of them offer immediate positive ROI. Depending on your goals, you could also consider applying to…

> [Among YC companies,] 45% secure Series A (vs. 33% average), 4% to 5% become a unicorn (vs. 2.5% average), and 10% achieve an exit. https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/pulling-back-the-curtain-on-the-mag… Of those 10% exits, 50% are acquisitions. Acquisitions are rarely lucrative for rank and file employees. But even at 10%, you need to have a crystal ball as an employee. YC is not an especially strong selector. And unicorn is baseline success these days (the data is from 2025), so we at the 5% level not 10%. Maybe you aren't aware of typical equity grants beyond, say, employee 10. You need at least a unicorn exit to match a big tech salary. I mean you're right, you don't have to return the fund. You have to match (risk-adjusted) the opportunity cost of a big tech salary. Incredibly hard and luck is the most relevant factor. Meanwhile, if you job hop out of the startup after startup because they mostly go nowhere, your resume quickly becomes uninteresting (ye olde 1 year of experience 5 times problem). So you do have to stick it out. > idea is dumb and bad. the idea rarely matters. ideas are free. execution is king.

ChatGPT 4: “ Brian Chesky, the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, has developed a unique approach to product management, drawing inspiration from the principles and practices at Apple during Steve Jobs' era. This approach emphasizes a design-centric philosophy and incorporates several key principles: 1. *Design as a Core Philosophy*: Chesky believes that design is much more than a department; it's a way of thinking about the world. This philosophy entails that designers are not just working for engineers but are sitting alongside them and driving the product. 2. *Simplification and Essence*: The focus is on simplifying products by distilling them to their essence, which requires a deep understanding of the product. 3. *Pride in Work*: Designers should only ship products they are proud of. This principle ensures that quality and personal investment are central to the product development process. 4. *Creativity and the Third Option*: When faced with two options, Chesky advocates for seeking a creative third option that requires more heart and imagination. Chesky's approach involves a departure from traditional methods of product management, leaning heavily into design and creativity as driving forces. This reflects a broader shift at Airbnb, where there has been a move away from traditional growth channels, a focus on new feature releases, and a push for setting ambitious goals [oai_citation:1,Brian Chesky’s new playbook for product, leadership, and…