More from @lennysan

Lenny Rachitsky

@lennysan

13 Apr

New post: Top 5 reasons marketplaces fail

1. Lack of demand-side PMF: Not enough customers badly need what you’re selling (e.g. Zimride, Kitchensurfing, Neighborrow, Sharingear, Design Inc, Mapudo, Wydr)

Read on 🧵
lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-marketpl…

2. Lack of supply-side PMF: Your supply doesn’t get enough value from your marketplace (e.g. Prim, Exec, HelloParking, ShipItWise)

3. Lack of liquidity: You’re unable to consistently match supply and demand (e.g. Threadflip, Prefer, Zaarly, Varagesale, LetGo)

4. Bad unit economics: You’re unable to make a profit delivering a competitive price to customers while retaining supply (e.g. Shyp, Luxe, Cherry, Homejoy, Omni, Kitchit, Prim, Washio, Exec, Move Loot, 99 Dresses, Dinner Lab, Commerce One)

Read 6 tweets

Lenny Rachitsky

@lennysan

8 Apr

Types of projects you'll experience at work, as taught to us by Kurt Vonnegut:

1. Man in Hole: The project starts off OK, but you quickly find a huge issue, which you are able to recover from, and it ends up a big success.

More in 🧵

2. Boy Meets Girl: The project starts incredibly well, but quickly turns into a nightmare, which you recover from and it ends up even better than it started.

3. From Bad to Worse: You take on a project that's going badly, and it only continues to get worse.

4. Which Way is Up: You're working on a project and you have no idea if it's going well or not.

5. Creation Story: Your project keeps getting more and more resources, which you take and find uses for.

Read 6 tweets

Lenny Rachitsky

@lennysan

7 Apr

https://twitter.com/lennysan/status/1318940907824033792

Today marks exactly one year since I moved to a paid newsletter.

Since then:
✔️ Published 80+ posts
✔️ Subscribers grew from 8k to 58k
✔️ I've gone from zero to now making *twice* what I made at my last tech job

Below are my 15 favorite posts from the past year 🧵

https://twitter.com/lennysan/status/1318940907824033792

1/ How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1,000 users lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-the-bigg…

2/ What is good retention lennysnewsletter.com/p/what-is-good…

Read 20 tweets

Lenny Rachitsky

@lennysan

28 Mar

@a16z

Looking at @a16z's Marketplace 100 got me wondering: what do marketplaces need to get right in order to beat non-marketplace alternatives?

Two main things:
1. Unlock an amazing new experience for customers
2. Unlock new revenue for supply

More in 🧵
a16z.com/marketplace-10…

@Instacart

1️⃣ Demand: Unlock an amazing new experience, in one of three ways

1. Provide much cheaper services through economies of scale: @Instacart @DoorDash @UberEats

2. Create brand new desirable supply: @BookCameo @outschool @Airbnb @Hipcamp @udemy @RoverDotCom

@stockx

3. Aggregate previously disaggregated supply and make it easy to find and transact: @stockx @goatapp @thredUP @Outdoorsy @faire_wholesale @thumbtack @officialgooddog @Uber @lyft

Read 6 tweets

Lenny Rachitsky

@lennysan

23 Feb

@Superhuman

This week's post is live: A collection of my favorite job postings + what you can learn from them to make your job posting more successful.

Examples include @Superhuman, @delightchathq, @MightyApp, @basecamp, @Levels, and more
lennysnewsletter.com/p/examples-of-…

1/ Founders often say that hiring is their #1 job, but it’s rare that you find a founder who spends as much time on their job postings as they do on, say, their product’s sign-up flow. This feels like a missed opportunity.

2/ Also, as a startup, you don’t have many opportunities to break through the noise. Since job postings are all generally so meh, putting extra effort into creating a remarkable job posting can be a very high ROI task.

Read 5 tweets