Teresa Torres, author of Continuous Discovery Habits, shares her opportunity solution tree framework, how to automate continuous customer interviews, common discovery mistakes, and how to make the case for user research at companies that don't value it.
Teresa Torres on how to interview customers, automating continuous discovery, the opportunity solution tree framework, making the case for user research, common interviewing mistakes, and much more
Teresa Torres · Lenny's Podcast
A product launch starts 3 months before the deploy. Go-to-market is not communication — it is alignment. Sales, support, CS, and marketing must be ready before the user.
"I have seen perfect features fail because nobody told the support team they existed. The launch is a coordination exercise, not a marketing one."
In PLG, your product IS your growth channel. Every friction point in onboarding is a lost acquisition. Audit your first 5 minutes of user experience monthly.
"The product is the marketing. If a user doesn't get to their first 'aha' moment within the first session, you've lost them forever."
Retention at week 4 tells you if you have product-market fit. Everything before that is acquisition noise. Optimize week-4 retention before anything else.
"D1 retention is about your onboarding. D30 retention is about your product. Only one of those tells you if you've found PMF."
B2B viral loops require a sharing incentive at the exact moment of user value — not after. Notion nailed this by making sharing the natural next step after creating a page.
"If sharing happens after the value, you've already lost the moment. Build the share trigger INTO the value delivery, not after it."
Cross-functional trust is the currency of PLG teams. If sales blames product and product blames marketing, your growth model is already broken.
"In PLG, the handoff between product growth and revenue is where companies die. Build the bridge before you need it."