Lenny's Newsletter $15 / month

Lenny's Newsletter is a weekly advice column focusing on product development, growth strategies, career advice, and workplace challenges. It incorporates insights from leading companies like Duolingo, Notion, and Shopify, offering actionable strategies for product-market fit, user engagement, and leveraging AI in product management.

Product Development Growth Strategy Career Advancement AI and Machine Learning User Engagement Product-Market Fit Workplace Culture Startups and Venture Capital

The hottest Substack posts of Lenny's Newsletter

And their main takeaways

How Duolingo reignited user growth

9571 implied HN points • 28 Feb 23
💼 Business Tech Marketing Growth Product Leadership
  1. Duolingo achieved 4.5x user growth over four years through innovative strategies like leaderboards and push notifications.
  2. Their focus on improving retention over new user acquisition led to significant improvements in engagement metrics.
  3. Using data and models, like Zynga and MyFitnessPal did, helped Duolingo identify North Star metrics and drive growth effectively.
Get a weekly roundup of the best Substack posts, by hacker news affinity:

How to pass any first-round interview (even in a terrible talent market)

5228 implied HN points • 04 Jul 23
🚌 Education Interview Preparation Career development Professional Skills Job Searching Personal Growth
  1. First-round interviews are designed to filter out candidates who may not be a good fit for the role.
  2. Prepare for interviews by organizing your career story, walking down memory lane, and learning behavioral frameworks.
  3. Ask high-quality questions at the end of the interview to showcase your interest and stand out as a candidate.

The Magic Loop

4559 implied HN points • 19 Sep 23
💼 Business Career growth Personal Development
  1. The Magic Loop is a framework for rapid career growth with five basic steps.
  2. The core Loop consists of doing your job well, asking your manager how you can help, doing what they ask, asking for work that aligns with your career goals, and repeating the cycle.
  3. Building a cooperative relationship with your manager through the Magic Loop can lead to career advancement and mutual benefits.

Your startup idea probably isn’t venture-scale

3537 implied HN points • 16 May 23
💼 Business Startups Venture Capital Entrepreneurship Market Analysis Investment Strategies
  1. Having a venture-scale startup idea involves aiming for $100 million annual revenue and $1 billion+ valuation in 10 years.
  2. Venture-scale investors look for a large market, a scalable business model, high growth potential, the ability to turn capital into growth, and a path to going public.
  3. Not all startup ideas need to be venture-scale; many ideas can still build a great revenue-generating business without the pressure and expectations of venture capital.

How Duolingo builds product

3459 implied HN points • 21 Mar 23
💼 Business Product Management Planning Team Dynamics
  1. Duolingo's product teams are structured with co-leads from different functions for effective leadership.
  2. Duolingo uses quarterly OKRs with a structured planning process involving team, area, and company-wide reviews.
  3. Duolingo plans with quarterly OKRs for teams/areas and yearly OKRs for the whole company to define strategic bets.

I built a Lenny chatbot using GPT-3. Here’s how to build your own.

3400 implied HN points • 07 Feb 23
  1. You can build your own AI chatbot using GPT-3 with no coding background necessary.
  2. GPT-3 is a powerful tool for generating text and holding conversations, but can sometimes provide inaccurate information.
  3. Chatbots created with GPT-3 can revolutionize content creation, personal knowledge management, and enterprise knowledge management.

Adding a work trial to your interview process

1336 implied HN points • 30 Jan 24
💼 Business Recruitment Process Company Culture
  1. A work trial in the interview process simulates actual work and helps in gauging a candidate's fit and skills.
  2. Work trials provide more insights on candidates' performance and dedication compared to traditional interviews.
  3. Good trial projects involve candidates working on real tasks similar to what they would do in the actual role.