“Most of my most popular posts are now guest posts, and most of the guest posts are far better than my posts.” Lenny Rachitsky wrote that in March 2025, in the issue marking his newsletter’s first million subscribers. It is the most useful sentence anyone pitching him can read, because it tells you the door exists and how high the bar on the other side sits.
Lenny’s Newsletter is the publication product managers, growth leads and founders open on Sunday morning and forward to their team on Monday. A First Round Review profile in April 2026 put it at 1.2 million subscribers and called it the top business newsletter on Substack. His podcast adds a second audience: over 500,000 YouTube subscribers and 100,000 to 200,000 downloads per episode, by the same profile’s count.
So if you have built something real and learned something the rest of the industry has not, this is one of the few places where a single piece can change how people know you. Below is how to get featured in Lenny’s Newsletter through the two routes that exist, guest posts and the podcast, plus the pitch test I use to decide whether an idea is ready.
What does Lenny’s Newsletter actually publish?
Lenny describes his newsletter as “a deeply researched advice column about building product, driving growth, and advancing your career.” Each word in that line does work. Deeply researched means a post leans on data, interviews or years of first-hand practice. Advice column means the reader walks away with something to do on Tuesday. Building product, growth and career are the three lanes, and almost nothing outside them runs.
Read twenty posts from the archive before you write a word of your pitch. Sort by top posts and you will see a pattern. The winners are frameworks with names, benchmarks gathered from dozens of companies, step-by-step playbooks, and templates readers can copy into their own docs. Positioning expert April Dunford has written three guest posts for him. They are dense, structured and practical, which is the house style.
Notice what you will not find. There are almost no thought pieces about the future of work, no essays about a founder’s personal journey for its own sake, and no product announcements. Lenny spent seven years as a product lead at Airbnb before he started writing, and he edits like an operator. If a paragraph does not help someone build, grow or get promoted, it does not survive.
The format also matters. Posts run long, often several thousand words, and they are skimmable. Headers carry the argument. Tables and screenshots do real explanatory work. If your idea fits in 600 words, it is a LinkedIn post, not a Lenny post.
Guest posts are the front door
Lenny has been clear that guest posts are central to the newsletter, not a side feature. In the million-subscriber issue he said he spends more than 10 hours with each guest author and goes through five or six iterations before a post meets his bar.
He also has a personal reason to believe in them. By his own account, his first 1,000 subscribers came from two guest posts: one on First Round Review and one on Andrew Chen’s blog. He knows what a well-placed guest piece can do for a writer, and he runs his own program with that in mind.
The practical catch is timing. Lenny does not keep an always-open submission inbox. He opens calls when he wants new voices. On June 16, 2026, he posted on X: “Apply to write a guest post for Lenny’s Newsletter.” In the same thread he said he had not held an open call in years, that no prior writing experience is required, and that the only requirement is that you have built successful products and have something valuable to share. He linked a Google Form for pitches and said he would reach out to a subset of finalists within two weeks.
That call spelled out what he looks for and what turns him off. He wants ideas that are well researched or rooted in something you know better than almost anyone, and ideas that add something new to the conversation about building products, careers or teams. The turn-offs were blunt: pitches that are clearly trying to promote your product or company, and pitches that are heavy on theory and light on tactics.
If you missed that window, follow Lenny on X and LinkedIn and subscribe to the newsletter so you see the next one. In the meantime, build the post. Writers who show up to an open call with a strong outline and real data move faster than writers who start from a blank page.
Get on Lenny’s Podcast by fitting the guest policy
The podcast is the second route, and Lenny has published who he wants. His guest policy, posted in March 2025, describes the show as interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts aimed at concrete, tactical advice. Every episode goes to his newsletter list as well, which is why a podcast slot can be worth as much as a post.
His ideal guest is not a CEO or founder. He says he indexes toward less-known people further down the ladder who have built great products people love, who have not done many other podcasts or interviews, and who can explain their insights clearly and succinctly. He adds that diverse backgrounds earn big bonus points.
There are two exceptions to the no-founders rule: legendary founders such as Brian Chesky, Marc Benioff and Tobi Lütke, and people building a product that product builders are going wild for. He named Cursor, v0, Lovable, Bolt and Replit as examples. He also brings on people who are world class at adjacent skills like public speaking, job hunting, design or engineering, but he says the bar for those exceptions is exceptionally high.
Read that policy as a filter, not a wish list. If you are a head of growth who scaled a self-serve funnel at a company people admire, and you have never been on a podcast, you are closer to his sweet spot than a well-known founder who does the interview circuit. Your rarity is an asset. Say so in the pitch.
The other show worth knowing about is How I AI, hosted by Claire Vo and introduced in 2025 under the Lenny’s Podcast banner. It focuses on how people use AI tools in their real work. If your story is a specific AI workflow rather than a broad product career, that show may be the better fit.
Build your pitch on the Three-Receipt test
Every pitch idea I pressure-test before it reaches an editor goes through one filter I call the Three-Receipt test. It came from reading Lenny’s turn-offs with care. He does not want promotion and he does not want theory. What is left is proof, and proof comes in three kinds.
The first receipt is the outcome. What did you build, and what happened? Name the product, the metric and the time frame. “I led growth at a B2B tool and we went from 2,000 to 40,000 weekly active teams in 18 months” is a receipt. “I am passionate about product-led growth” is not.
The second receipt is the method. How did you do it, in enough detail that a reader could try it? This is where most pitches go soft. They describe the result and skip the mechanism. Lenny’s readers want the onboarding checklist you rewrote, the pricing test you ran, the meeting cadence you killed. If you cannot describe the process in five concrete steps, you do not have a post yet.
The third receipt is the artifact. What can a reader take away and use? A template, a scoring rubric, a benchmark table, a named framework, a set of interview questions. Look at the most shared guest posts and almost every one leaves the reader holding a tool.
Score your idea one point per receipt. Three points means pitch it. Two points means you are close, so go find the missing piece. One point means you have a good story for a dinner party and a weak pitch for Lenny.
The test also keeps you out of the promotion trap. If your artifact is “sign up for our product,” it fails. If your method only works with your software, it fails. The receipts have to stand on their own for a reader who will never buy from you.
Why do most pitches fail?
The most common failure is a pitch about your company dressed up as a pitch about an idea. Lenny named this in his open call, and it is easy to see why it keeps happening. Founders and marketers spend all day explaining why their product matters. When they write a pitch, the habit leaks in. The result reads like a launch post with a framework stapled on top.
The second failure is pontification. A pitch that says “I want to write about why great PMs think in systems” gives Lenny nothing to evaluate. There is no data, no story and no tool. Compare it with “I interviewed 30 PMs promoted to director in the last two years and coded what they did differently in their last six months before promotion.” The second version is a post. The first is a mood.
The third failure is novelty without depth. Lenny has published on most of the core topics in product and growth already, often more than once. Pitching “how to run a good retro” without a new angle or new data asks him to repeat himself. Search his archive for your topic first. If he has covered it, your pitch needs to say what is new: a fresh data set, a different company stage, a method that contradicts the earlier advice.
The fourth failure is a weak first paragraph. In his 500,000-subscriber issue, Lenny wrote that with almost every guest post he edits, removing the first paragraph of the first draft makes the post stronger. Take the hint before you hit submit. Cut the warm-up and open with the most useful thing you know.
Expect a month of edits, and plan for it
Lenny’s June 2026 call warned that the bar is extremely high and that writers should expect a month of iterating and editing. April Dunford has described a three-month process for her own guest posts. Neither of these is a warning to scare people off. They describe the job.
Plan for it the way you would plan a product launch. Block time on your calendar for revisions. Get any approvals you need from your employer before you pitch, not after you are three drafts in, because a legal review that kills your best data point will cost you the slot. Collect screenshots, charts and permission to name companies early.
Take the edits well. A writer named Evan Hamilton shared that he drafted a 10-page article within a week and a half after Lenny opened spots for guest writers, then went through several rounds of revisions before it ran. That is the normal path. If the comments in the Google Doc feel brutal, remember that Lenny has done this with dozens of authors and his readers reward the result.
One more practical point. Keep your own voice. Lenny edits for clarity and usefulness, not to make every writer sound like him. The posts that do best still sound like a real practitioner talking.
Make the feature pay off after it runs
When your post or episode goes live, the work shifts to distribution. Lenny’s audience is large, but your own network is what turns a single feature into lasting credibility. Share it on LinkedIn with a summary of the most useful idea, not just “excited to share.” Send it to the people you quoted. Add it to your speaker bio and your LinkedIn featured section.
Evan Hamilton promoted his post on relevant forums and subreddits after it ran, which helped it travel further and made him a stronger candidate for future collaborations. That is the right instinct. The feature is a credential, and credentials compound when people see them more than once.
Think about where the post will live long term, too. A well-titled guest post on Lenny’s Newsletter can rank in search and show up when AI assistants answer questions about your topic, because it sits on a trusted domain with heavy linking. Reference it in your own writing. Link to it from your site. When journalists or podcast bookers look you up later, it should be one of the first things they find.
If you take one thing from this guide on how to get featured in Lenny’s Newsletter, take the Three-Receipt test. Lenny’s own words tell you that guest writers produce his best work and that he will put in the hours to help you get there. He is not looking for famous names or polished prose. He is looking for builders with proof, a method and something readers can use.
So here is the question to sit with before the next open call: which of your three receipts is missing right now, and what would it take to go get it?