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Lenny Rachitsky Profile picture
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29 Dec, 12 tweets, 8 min read
This week, I reflect on the wild year this newsletter has had, and share a bit about what's coming next. See thread for summary.

I've also taken the opportunity to collect the top posts and tweets from the year, plus my favorite mother-in-law takeaways 🥰
lennyrachitsky.com/p/2020-year-in…
1/ How it started
2/ How it's going
3/ Accomplishments this year

1. A post every week of the year
2. 700% YoY growth
3. Launched a paid plan
4. Launched the private Slack community (one of my proudest achievements)
5. Added a second weekly email highlighting the top advice from the community, curated by @KiyaniBba
4/ Coming next year

1. More in-depth deep dives, including a “grand unified theory of growth”
2. A live online course for new product managers
3. A personally curated guide of the best resources for anything product, growth, startups, working with humans, and more
...
4b/ (continued)

4. More investment in the community, including a regular cadence of fireside chats with the most interesting people in growth, product, and startups

5. And generally, more of the same: actionable and concrete advice delivered to you weekly
5/ Most popular posts this year: Growth

lennyrachitsky.com/p/how-the-bigg…

lennyrachitsky.com/p/how-todays-f…

lennyrachitsky.com/p/what-is-good…

lennyrachitsky.com/p/this-week-21…

lennyrachitsky.com/p/magical-grow…
6/ Most popular posts this year: Product

lennyrachitsky.com/p/my-favorite-…

lennyrachitsky.com/p/product-mana…

lennyrachitsky.com/p/getting-bett…

lennyrachitsky.com/p/flywheels-fl…

lennyrachitsky.com/p/managing-up
7/ Most popular posts this year: Building a company

lennyrachitsky.com/p/my-favorite-…

lennyrachitsky.com/p/a-playbook-f…

lennyrachitsky.com/p/what-it-feel…

lennyrachitsky.com/p/how-to-know-…

lennyrachitsky.com/p/sales-bottom…
8/ Most popular tweets













9/ And finally, my favorite mother-in-law's takeaways 💖









10/ To all of you who subscribe, share, ask questions, or have helped me in any way with the newsletter or the community: THANK YOU.

I could not be more grateful to you for allowing me to do this work 💖

2021 here we come!

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More from @lennysan

Lenny Rachitsky Profile picture
28 Dec
Below are a few of the most interesting takeaways from my survey to ~1,000 product managers across ~600 companies:

1. The amount of influence you have as a PM varies widely, from @Zynga at one end of the spectrum, to @Apple at the other

*Read on*
2. The top three skills companies prioritize when hiring an individual contributor PM: Communication, Execution, Product sense
3. This however varies widely by company:

• Companies who prioritize Collaboration: @Atlassian, @box @servicenow, @Spotify, @Twitter

• Companies who prioritize Raw intelligence: @Coinbase, @RobinhoodApp

• Companies who prioritize Empathy: @HubSpot, @intercom
Read 8 tweets
Lenny Rachitsky Profile picture
22 Dec
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
Read 8 tweets
Lenny Rachitsky Profile picture
18 Dec
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
Read 13 tweets
Lenny Rachitsky Profile picture
9 Dec
With Airbnb going public tomorrow, I thought I'd revisit the lessons Airbnb taught me about building a company (my very first public post!)

Read on for a glimpse into what makes Airbnb so special 👇
marker.medium.com/what-seven-yea…
1/ Founders obsessed with culture

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.

Exhibit A 👇
medium.com/@bchesky/dont-…
2/ Set wildly ambitious goals

@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.
Read 9 tweets
Lenny Rachitsky Profile picture
8 Dec
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 👇
lennyrachitsky.com/p/creating-buz…
First, why does it need to be "remarkable"? Watch this clip by @ThisIsSethsBlog
Strategy 1: Create a remarkable video, e.g. @DescriptApp, @DollarShaveClub, @PooPourri
Read 14 tweets
Lenny Rachitsky Profile picture
30 Nov
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)
Read 7 tweets

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