2020 Year in Review – Issue 58
Most popular posts, tweets, and a reflection on the year
I started this newsletter a year and a half ago, as an experiment.
At the beginning of this year, six months into the experiment, I had 6,000 subscribers, a couple dozen posts, and no real plan for where all of this was going. I still thought I wanted to start a company, and this newsletter was still a distracting side-project. As the year progressed though, the picture became clearer.
Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan
Crossed 1,000 paid subscribers today. Now making a living off 1,000 true fans. What do you know.Today, with nearly 45,000 subscribers, over ~3,000 paid subscribers, a Slack community of over 2,500 helpful-smart-driven people, and ~100 posts, I’ve never been clearer on what I should be doing: this.
To all of you who subscribe, share, ask questions, and share words of encouragement: THANK YOU. I could not be more grateful to you for allowing me to do this work 💖
Here’s what we accomplished this year:
At least one post every single week of the year (64 in total)
700% YoY growth in subscribers, sitting somewhere in the top 15 most popular Substack newsletters
Launched a paid plan, which went from zero to over 3,000 subscribers in ~6 months
Launched the private Slack community, which continues to be one of my proudest achievements with this whole endeavor
Added a second weekly email, which highlights the best advice from the community itself, curated by Kiyani
What you can expect in the coming year:
More in-depth deep dives, including a “grand unified theory of growth”
A live online course for new product managers
A personally curated guide of the best resources for anything product, growth, startups, working with humans, or anything else that stresses you out at the office
More investment in the community, including a regular cadence of fireside chats with the most interesting people in growth, product, and startups
And generally, more of the same: actionable and concrete advice delivered to you weekly
I can’t wait to get started.
To leave you with something concretely valuable this week, I’ve collected the most popular posts (and tweets) from this year, along with a fun bonus. Enjoy, and see you in 2021!
Most popular posts this year
Growth
Product Management
Building a company
Most popular tweets this year
Bonus: My favorite mother-in-law’s takeaways
For those of you who don't follow me on Twitter and have no idea what I’m talking about, I gave my mother-in-law a free subscription to my newsletter, and ever since she’s replied to every single issue with her insightful and heart-warming takeaways. Here are some of my favorites:
Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan
This week's post: When NOT to run an experiment The fact that you *can* run an experiment and know the precise impact of your changes is…incredible. Don't take that super-power for granted. But this doesn't mean you should always run an experiment 👇 https://t.co/HfSP6bv4Xy
Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan
Early-stage bottom-up SaaS founders – this thread is for you Below 👇 🔬 Most important metrics to track 🛠 Tools to track these metrics 🎨 How to best visualize and share these metrics
Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan
🔥 New post: The moment 25 of today's most interesting companies realized they found product-market fit Stories from @netflix @Uber @Airbnb @Superhuman @SubstackInc @Tinder @Instacart @stripe @Dropbox @datadoghq and many more Takeaways in thread below 👇 https://t.co/R5RvHrUNeZ
Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan
Founders often ask me how to create buzz around their launch. I finally have an answer: Do something remarkable. *Something worth remarking about* In this week's post, I share examples and strategies of remarkable ✨ A few favorites in thread below 👇 https://t.co/0W1b38vTcH https://t.co/bh8RpI9tKcThank you again so much for your support, and see you next year ✨
🔥 Job opportunities
✨ Sponsored job of the week: Product Manager at UserLeap ✨
Design: Ashby, Office Hours, Runway, Stytch, Watershed
Engineering manager: Cerebral
Fullstack engineer: Cascade, Centered, Icebreaker, Iggy, Primer, Runway, Snackpass
How would you rate this week's newsletter? 🤔
For full access to the weekly posts, past archives, and private community, consider subscribing 👇
Sincerely,
Lenny 👋
The newsletter is awesome, but the community is incredible. Big ups, can't wait to see what you do in 2021
Hey, Lenny! THANK YOU for this post and the inspiration it gave me to start my own Substack a few months back. :)