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

Life alert: I’m adding a paid plan to my newsletter 🤞 After much prodding from readers and friends, I’m going to take the leap and give this life-path a shot. Consider subscribing and joining me on this journey 🙏 lennyrachitsky.com/p/this-newslet…

lennyrachitsky.comThis newsletter is growing up 🌱Starting in two weeks, only paid subscribers will get this newsletter weekly. In addition, paid subscriber questions will be prioritized, plus they’ll get a few other goodies (see below). Free subscribers will now receive this newsletter only about once a month.

Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan

After ten months of a free newsletter, and now six weeks into paid, this thing is for real: 🙏 ~450 paid subscribers 👋 ~13,000 free subscribers 🤯 ~$56k ARR (before fees) For anyone thinking about newsletter'ing, some early learnings in the thread below 👇

Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan

Crossed 1,000 paid subscribers today. Now making a living off 1,000 true fans. What do you know.

Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan

I'm now earning a higher salary from this newsletter than I did at my last tech job (PM Lead at Airbnb) 🤯

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

How to price your SaaS product
A playbook for fundraising
What it feels like when you've found product-market fit
How to know if you've got product-market fit
The Transition: Layering sales onto a bottom-up self-serve product

Most popular tweets this year

Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan

What to look for when evaluating a start idea 1. 🤤 Product-Market Fit 2. 🌎 Market size 3. 💥 Why now 4. 👋 Distribution 5. 🤝 Team 6. 🛡️ Moat 7. ⚙️ Business model (read on)

Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan

What’s the best career advice you got in your 20s?

Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan

What is good user retention? Advice from the experts: • Consumer Social: 25%👌 45%🔥 • Consumer Transactional: 30%👌 50%🔥 • Consumer Subscription: 40%👌 70%🔥 • SMB / Mid-Market SaaS: 60%👌 80%🔥 • Enterprise SaaS: 70%👌 90%🔥 (Read on)

Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan

The jobs of a Product Manager (a sneak peek at tomorrow's post)

Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan

The clearest sign of finding product-market fit is feeling "pull" from the market. But what does "pull" look like? 👇 Read on 👇

Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan

Looking back at the most successful consumer startups of the last 10 years — most companies achieved initial scale by excelling at just one of three growth "lanes": 1. Performance marketing (e.g. FB ads) 2. Virality (e.g. WOM, invites) 3. Content (e.g. SEO) 👇 Read on 👇

Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan

Increasing your retention rate is like hosting a great party: 1. Invite the right people 2. Welcome them thoughtfully 3. Make sure they have a great time 4. Catch them before they bail 5. If they leave, show them what they're missing

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: