## Q: I’m taking some time off and looking to study up on all things product and company building. Any recommendations?
For the past three years, I’ve been keeping a private collection of all my favorite reads/listens/watches: around 200 of the most actionable, highest signal-to-noise content I’ve come across on product, growth, investing, writing, and much more.
Access to this collection has been a perk of your paid subscription, but many of you didn’t know it existed, aren’t sure how to find it, and honestly, it’s gotten a bit stale. Inspired by your question, I’ve spent the past week cleaning it up—removing posts that haven’t stood the test of time and adding dozens more.
Below, I present my all-time favorite content across seven subjects:
1. 🚀 Growth 2. 🌱 Startups 3. ✍️ Writing 4. 💸 Angel investing 5. 🦸♂️ Product management 6. 👑 Leadership 7. 🏗 Frameworks
I’m certain I’ve missed many great pieces of content. You can nominate your favorite posts to be added or just reply and share it with me—seriously, please do that 🙏. You can also visit the full directory here anytime. Within some of these categories, for completeness, I’ve included some of my own writing that has been particularly helpful to readers (and that I’m particularly proud of).
Finally, some advice for not getting overwhelmed by this amount of content:
1. Pick the one subject you’re most curious about right now and read just a few of the pieces 2. Save this email and come back to it when you’re looking for inspiration in a subject 3. Archive this email immediately and get back to work
🚀 Growth
#### General
1. Startup = growth by Paul Graham 2. Growth wins by Casey Winters, Brian Balfour, and Kevin Kwok 3. Growth by Alex Schultz 4. Growing a startup by Julian Shapiro
#### Growth strategy
1. Growth loops are the new funnels by Brian Balfour 2. Four fits for $100m+ growth by Brian Balfour 3. Distribution by Ben Horowitz 4. The power user curve by Andrew Chen 5. The racecar growth framework by Dan Hockenmaier and myself 6. Drive growth by picking the right lane by Dan Hockenmaier and myself
#### B2B sales
1. Founding sales by Pete Kazanjy 2. Fear of sales by Elad Gil 3. The “$20M to $500m” question: Adding top down sales by a16z 4. B2B SaaS marketing guide by Alex Kracov 5. How I’ve approached founder-led sales by Alex Kracov 6. The greatest sales pitch I’ve seen all year by Andy Raskin 7. Simple math to set up a sales team by David Sacks 8. Positioning your startup is vital—here’s how to nail it by Arielle Jackson 9. Positioning by April Dunford
#### B2B GTM
1. The modern GTM by Unusual Ventures 2. GTM nirvana by Caroline Clark 3. The market curve by Mike Vernal 4. [This GTM-leader-turned-investor crowdsources early lessons from Stripe, Figma & more](https://review.firstround.com/this-gtm-leader-turned-investor-crowdsources-early-lessons-from-stripe-figma-and-more#lesson-3-beware-of-abandoning-founder-led-sales-prematurely-but-be-ready-to-scale-immediately-once-you-find-true-market-pull) by Meka Asonye
#### PLG / Bottom-up
1. Introduction to PLG (product-led growth) by Sandhya Hegde 2. Picking a GTM motion by John Vrionis 3. How David Sacks built the first bottom-up playbook for enterprise by Bri Kimmel 4. The Transition: Layering sales onto a bottom-up self-serve product by Pete Kazanjy 5. Growth + sales: The new era of enterprise go-to-market by Peter Lauten and Martin Casado 6. How to know if you’re interviewing at a product-led company by Andrew Skotzko 7. [Product-led growth lessons from Atlassian](https://mattryall.net/blog/product-led-growth) by Matt Ryall 8. The product-led-growth (PLG) playbook for B2B startups by Mark Roberge
#### SEO
1. Winning at SEO by Brian Ta 2. The SEO strategy Zapier used to reach $140M ARR by Ryan Berg 3. How MasterClass built an $800M edtech empire in just 5 years 4. [The Canva backlink empire: How SEO, outreach & content led to a $6B valuation](https://foundationinc.co/lab/canva-seo) 5. How we grew our SaaS blog traffic to 30k monthly visits in 6 months 6. Content-driven growth (by me)
#### Marketplaces
1. The hierarchy of marketplaces by Sarah Tavel 2. Four paths to marketplace success by D’Arcy Coolican 3. Underutilized fixed assets by Kevin Kwok 4. Marketplace supply strategy by Casey Winters and Anne Lewandowski 5. “White space” for building a marketplace by Sarah Tavel 6. Sequencing business models: The types of marketplaces by Casey Winters 7. The a16z Marketplace 100: 2021 by D’Arcy Coolican and Brandon Barros 8. Operating leverage by Alex Taussig 9. How to kickstart and scale a marketplace business (by me)
#### Growth team structure
1. How to hire a head of growth by Casey Winters and Harry Stebbings 2. Building growth: product, process, and team by Brian Balfour, Casey Winters, and Kevin Kwok 3. I’ve built multiple growth teams. Here’s why I won’t do it again by Lars Lofgren
🌱 Startups
#### General
1. Startup advice by Sam Altman 2. The hardest lessons for startups to learn by Paul Graham 3. Building product by Michael Seibel 4. The cadence: How to operate a SaaS startup by David Sacks 5. Choosing your north star metric (by me)
#### Fundraising
1. On presentations by Siqi Chen 2. Advice on pitching by Aaron Harris (YC) 3. All the public startup pitch decks in one place by Andy Sparks 4. A playbook for fundraising by Marc McCabe 5. The unusual guide for raising seed and Series A capital by John Vrionis 6. Writing a business plan by Sequoia 7. A guide to seed fundraising by Geoff Ralston (YC) 8. How to run an investment process by Steve Schlafman 9. Market sizing guide by Pear VC 10. Let’s talk Series Bs by Allen Miller
#### Product-market fit
1. Do you have product market fit? by Casey Winters 2. Andy Rachleff on “How to know if you’ve got product market fit” 3. How to know if you’ve got product-market fit (by me) 4. What it feels like when you've found product-market fit (by me) 5. How long it takes to find product-market fit (by me) 6. What is good retention? (by me)
#### Pricing strategy
1. Pricing your SaaS product by Patrick Campbell 2. Bottom up pricing & packaging: Let the user journey be your guide by Jennifer Li and Martin Casado 3. Per seat or per use pricing: A framework for evaluating the right strategy for your startup by Tomasz Tunguz 4. Pricing lessons from working with 30+ seed and Series A B2B startups by Tyler Gaffney
#### Financials
1. The burn multiple by David Sacks 2. Cash conversion cycle: Bridging the gap between profitability & cash flow by Adam Keesling 3. Benchmarks of option plans by Index Ventures
#### Co-founder relationship
1. Investing in your co-founder relationship to weather the storm by Steve Schlafman 2. The founder dating playbook: Here’s the process I used to find my co-founder by Gloria Lin 3. Healing your co-founder relationship by Carole Robin
#### Working remotely
1. [GitLab’s guide to all-remote](https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/) 2. Zapier’s guide to working remotely
✍️ Writing
1. How to write usefully by Paul Graham 2. On Writing Well by William Zinsser 3. The day you became a better writer by Scott Adams 4. Why you should write by David Perell 5. Writing well by Julian Shapiro 6. Write for one person by David Perell 7. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft Stephen King
💸 Angel investing
1. How to angel invest by Naval 2. How to be an angel investor by Paul Graham 3. Investing in public: Non-obvious lessons from 100+ angel investments by Tod Sacerdoti 4. Spearhead blog by Naval and Nivi 5. Angel by Jason Calacanis
🦸♂️ Product management
#### General
1. 10 traits of great PMs by Noah Weiss 2. Building products by Julie Zhuo 3. Product management mental models for everyone by Brandon Chu 4. 3 types of product managers: Builders, tuners, innovators by Sachin Rekhi 5. What makes a strong product culture? by Ken Norton 6. Good product team/bad product team by Marty Cagan 7. Executive engagement by Marty Cagan 8. Observations on product management by Dan Hill 9. What distinguishes the top 1% of product managers from the top 10%? by Ian McAllister
#### Templates
1. My favorite product management templates (by me) 2. Growth experiment write-up template by David Ly Khim 3. 180+ OKR and goal examples
#### The PM role
1. Communication is the job by Boz 2. The growing specialization of product management by Adam Fishman and Keya Patel 3. How to become a peak product manager by Ravi Mehta 4. [Dropbox VP, product and growth Adam Nash on great product leaders](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24F8WlyMR00) 5. How am I going to move my product forward today? by Sachin Rekhi 6. A leader’s guide to implementing OKRs by Sachin Rekhi 7. Time management: Tips for product managers by John Cutler 8. Product management career ladders (by me) 9. A comprehensive survey of product management (by me)
#### Getting into PM
1. How to get into product management (by me) 2. Breaking into PMing by Sriram Krishnan 3. How to break into product management by Sachin Rekhi
#### Strategy
1. Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt 2. WTF is strategy? by Vince Law 3. Applying leverage as a product manager by Brandon Chu 4. How to become a strategic leader by Julie Zhuo 5. How to define your product strategy by Gibson Biddle 6. Mission, strategy, and tactics by Boz 7. Working backwards by Ian McAllister 8. Getting better at product strategy (by me)
#### Vision
1. The Magic of Thinking Big by David Joseph Schwartz 2. How to build a breakthrough by Mike Maples, Jr. 3. A founder’s guide to coming up with vision and strategy by Laura Behrens Wu
#### Execution
1. Product development cycle fundamentals by Michael Seibel 2. Making good decisions as a product manager by Brandon Chu 3. Your job is not to make every possible customer happy by Steve Blank 4. How am I going to move my product forward today? by Sachin Rekhi 5. Measure What Matters by John Doerr 6. [Miro’s product alignment approach](https://blog.farbodsaraf.com/p/miros-product-alignment-approach) by Farbod Saraf 7. The agony and ecstasy of building with data by Julie Zhuo 8. Deadlines by Brandon Chu 9. A three-step framework for solving problems (by me) 10. Prioritizing (by me)
#### Communication
1. Executive communication by Michael Dearing 2. How to write email with military precision by Kabir Sehgal (HBR) 3. The Minto pyramid principle and the SCR Framework (by me)
#### Design
1. How to identify good design in 6 steps by José Torre 2. 10 exercises to train product thinking by Alex Kistenev 3. How to work with designers by Julie Zhuo 4. Training your product intuition by Merci Victoria Grace 5. UX Tools
#### User research
1. Discovery: Learning vs. insights by Marty Cagan 2. The ladder of evidence: Get more value from your customer interviews and product experiments by Teresa Torres 3. Why you only need to test with 5 users by Jakob Nielsen
#### Hiring and interviewing
1. How to hire a product manager by Ken Norton 2. Cracking the PM Interview by Jackie Bavaro and Gayle Laakmann McDowell 3. Interview tips for senior PMs by Jackie Bavaro 4. Product manager interview: Create a product roadmap by Clement Kao 5. Our 6 must reads if you’re hiring a product manager by First Round Capital 6. Stage of company, not name of company by Nikhyl Singhal
#### Managing and leadership
1. The Manager’s Handbook by Alex MacCaw 2. The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo 3. Be a great product leader by Adam Nash 4. The job of leadership is to foster alignment and enthusiasm toward the right goal by Ev Williams 5. How to craft your product team at every stage, from pre-product/market fit to hypergrowth by Nikhyl Singhal 6. Managing and developing product managers by Brandon Chu 7. Crossing the canyon: Product manager to product leader by Fareed Mosavat and Casey Winters
#### Books
1. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni 2. Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen 3. Quiet Leadership by David Rock 4. INSPIRED by Marty Cagan 5. Measure What Matters by John Doerr 6. High Output Management by Andy Grove 7. Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt 8. Radical Candor by Kim Scott 9. Don't Make Me Think, Revisited by Steve Krug 10. The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick 11. The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman 12. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
👑 Leadership
1. The Great CEO Within by Matt Mochary 2. Etsy lessons by Lara Hogan 3. To show recognition, try speaking a different language by Katie Dill 4. The best approach to the worst conversation: “You’re fired” by Michael Lopp 5. Shishir’s tips for executive onboarding by Shishir Mehrotra 6. Exec 101: First 30 days by Sriram Krishnan 7. A career cold start algorithm by Boz 8. Say no by Elad Gil
🏗 Frameworks
1. Jobs to be done (JTBD) by Alan Klement 2. DACI decision-making framework 3. Gokul’s S.P.A.D.E. Toolkit 4. Product management frameworks by Shreyas Doshi 5. Frameworks v0.2 by Chris Paik 6. Aggregation theory by Ben Thompson 7. Status as a service by Eugene Wei
Anything missing? Please [nominate](https://coda.io/form/Nominate-a-resource_dzwJdExoJuW) anything else you’ve found useful. And have a fulfilling and productive week🙏
🔥 Featured job openings
1. Brace: Senior Product Manager (NYC) 2. Goldin Auctions: Director of Marketing (Remote-Global) 3. Highlight: Founding Blockchain Engineer (Remote-Global) 4. Pinpoint: Product Manager (Remote-Global) 5. Aescape: Product Management Lead (Brooklyn, NY) 6. Mynd: Senior Growth Product Manager (Remote-US) 7. Mynd: Product Lead, Internal Tools (Remote-US) 8. CHPTR: Founding Back-End Engineer (Remote-US) 9. Permutive: Senior Product Manager (NYC) 10. CloudTrucks: Product Manager-Console (SF) 11. Fairchain: Software Engineer, Full Stack (NYC)
Browse more open roles, or add your own, at [Lenny’s Job Board](https://lennysnewsletter.com/jobs).
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Sincerely,
Lenny 👋