I'm really excited to finally share the results of a survey I've been working on for months, looking into how the Product Manager role differs across the industry. With nearly 1,000 survey responses across 600 companies, the results are illuminating 👇 lennyrachitsky.com/p/product-mana…
1/ What skills are most valued when hiring a PM, across the top 50 companies I got responses from
2/ What PMs have to get most right to get promoted
3/ How much influence PMs have relative to other functions, overall and by company
4/ How PMs describe their role
5/ How companies index across Heart (e.g. empathy, culture) vs. Hands (e.g. execution) vs. Head (e.g. intelligence)
6/ Don't miss the full post for takeaways and links to dig deeper. And if you have any other takeaways, feedback, or questions, let me know! lennyrachitsky.com/p/product-mana…
SEO experiments are fundamentally different from typical A/B experiments because they need to test changes on a "page" level, vs. a "user" level. Below are five tips for running SEO experiments, courtesy of @fanfavorite_bta
1/ What kind of SEO experiments can I run?
Anything your heart desires, as long as it’s an on-page change. If you want to test your title tags, meta tags, or image alt – run wild. However, if you want to measure changes with internal linking, that’s a whole different beast.
2/ What should I measure with SEO experiments?
Organic traffic. Nothing else.
You’ll likely want to measure other things experimentally, but unfortunately, it will not work, including:
• Keyword rankings
• Average ranking
• Search Engine Result Page Clicks
• Conversions
From day one, Airbnb has been a company obsessed with culture, values, and quirky rituals. This helped with hiring, move quickly when opportunities arose, and also overcoming adversity.
@bchesky is (in)famous for doubling our proposed goals and often pushing us to 10x our goal. This ambitious approach pushed teams to think bigger, and at the end of each year we were often shocked at how close we came to hitting those goals.
One of my biggest surprises from researching B2B growth is that 100% of successful bottom-up B2B companies eventually add a sales team. It's not a question of if – it's a question of when and how.
Below are my fav 5 tips from @Kazanjy for setting this transition up for success👇
1/ First, do sales yourself. As a foremost expert in the problem space, you’re best positioned to have the first few dozen sales conversations.
Later on, these sales tasks will be handed to a specially hired salesperson but only after the initial motion has been roughed out.
2/ To get a sense of the need for a full-time salesperson, add a “Contact Us” or “Contact Sales” CTA to your home page in a place that wouldn't distract the user from self-sign up. Watch for inbound requests asking for large-company-type needs (e.g. SOC 2, consolidate billing)
2/ One of the most surprising takeaways from my own research into early B2B growth was that *100%* of the bottom-up B2B companies ended up layering on a sales team. It’s rarely a question of if — it’s more a question of when, and how.
3/ First of all, should I even start with a self-serve product?
Yes, if: 1. Is the product simple enough for self-serve? 2. Is this truly new and differentiated? 3. Can this co-exist with a (less good) incumbent in a given company’s stack? 4. Will you focus on small orgs?
Data points from Airbnb's S-1 that get me excited about its future:
1. *91%* of all traffic comes organically from direct or unpaid channels. This is the key to Airbnb's strategy (winning at direct traffic, avoiding paid growth), and it's working.
More in thread 👇
2/ Not only is traffic cheaper (since it's mostly organic), but guest cohort retention is also much higher than the competition. It's also a rare "smiling curve" – it goes UP over time.
3/ Similarly, host cohort revenue retention hits *100%* over time, and also increases after year two. That doesn't mean tons of hosts don't leave (note: this is revenue retention, not user retention), but this is promising.