How I built a 1M+ subscriber newsletter and top 10 tech podcast | Lenny Rachitsky

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:00)
I just sat down on this rock, on a substance of some sort. And this was as I was starting the newsletter, and this phrase of, I have wisdom to share, coming through me over and over and over. And I was just watching this crazy visualization of some kind of sitting Buddha thing, and that was for three hours. It gave me the confidence that like, okay, maybe I do have things to share.

**Michelle Rial** (0:18)
What do you want to say to our mothers right now?

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:20)
Do you want to take that back?

**Michelle Rial** (0:23)
Do you want to take that back? You started your newsletter 2019, and it now has over a million subscribers.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:30)
1.2 million.

**Michelle Rial** (0:30)
1.2.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:31)
Something that we've talked about a few times is the best stuff comes from actual experience.

**Michelle Rial** (0:35)
People always say if you want to write, read.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:37)
The source of the best advice is from practitioners doing the thing for real. At this point, most of my posts are guest posts where somebody's sharing the best thing they've learned in their career.

**Michelle Rial** (0:45)
What do you think you'd be doing right now if you hadn't started that newsletter?

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:48)
On the struggle bus of startup life probably, and then probably after that failed, I would have joined some company as a PM.

**Michelle Rial** (0:54)
Do you still like it?

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:54)
I can't imagine doing something more fulfilling and interesting. But the visual I always have is the Indiana Jones boulder is chasing me constantly. It's like this treadmill that you're on.

**Michelle Rial** (1:03)
Tell me about time you've been really stressed in your business.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (1:07)
Here's something I've never shared.
Today, my guest is my brilliant, incredible wife, Michelle Rial, who turns the table and interviews me. I've had so many people over the years want me to be interviewed on this podcast, and what could be more fun than doing this with my wife? I share things during this conversation that I've never shared anywhere else, including some of the hardest moments from this journey. I get a lot more personal than I've ever been on this podcast. Also, the day this podcast comes out just happens to be my wife's birthday, and she is also about to publish her third book, a children's book, called Charts for Babies, which we chat briefly about. Definitely pre-order it. This was so fun and so special. I hope you love it. Let's get into it. Here's a puzzle for you. What do OpenAI, Cursor, Perplexity, Versel, Platte and hundreds of other winning companies have in common? The answer is they're all powered by today's sponsor, WorkOS. If you're building software for enterprises, you've probably felt the pain of integrating single sign-on, skim, RBAC, audit logs and other features required by big customers. WorkOS turns those deal blockers into drop-in APIs with a modern developer platform built specifically for B2B SaaS. Whether you're a seed-stage startup trying to land your first enterprise customer or a unicorn expanding globally, WorkOS is the fastest path to becoming enterprise ready and unlocking growth. They're essentially Stripe for enterprise features. Visit workos.com to get started or just hit up their Slack support where they have real engineers in there who answer your questions super fast. WorkOS allows you to build like the best, with delightful APIs, comprehensive docs, and a smooth developer experience. Go to workos.com to make your app enterprise ready today. Who says hiring has to be fair? Every founder and hiring manager I've been speaking with these days is feeling the same pressure. Hire the best people as fast as possible. But recruiting is time-consuming, alignment is hard, and competition for great talent keeps getting tighter. That's why teams like 11 Labs, Brex, Replet, Deal, and 5,000 other organizations use MetaView, the AI company giving high-performance teams a real unfair advantage in hiring. They give you a suite of AI agents that behave like recruiting coworkers. They find candidates for you based on your exact criteria, take interview notes automatically, gather insights across your hiring process, and help you identify the best candidates in your pipeline. AI handles the recruiting toil and gives you a real source of truth. That means hours saved per hire and a team focused on what matters most, winning the right candidates. Don't let your competitors out-hire you. MetaView customers close roles 30% faster. Try MetaView today for free and get an extra month of sourcing at metaview.ai/lenny. That's M-E-T-A view dot A-I slash Lenny.
Michelle Rial, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.