Aakash Gupta

How I Wrote My 3 Most Viral Posts

Today, we have a very fun episode. We’re teaming up with my long-time collaborator and friend Aatir Abdul Rauf—who’s now a VP of Marketing and spent the past decade in senior product roles. We’re each reviewing 3 of each other’s favorite posts. We’re chatting about: Preview – 00:00:00 Agenda of the Podcast – 00:01:24 Aatir Post 1 – The New Trio in Product (PM–PMM–Growth) – 00:01:34 Common Mission – Sustainable PMF – 00:06:34 Ad (WorkOS) – 00:11:39 Ad (Amplitude) – 00:12:52 Sustainable PMF Continued (in the context of goals) – 00:13:29 How PMs Are Owning Growth – 00:14:38 Why We Need This Trio – 00:17:23 How This Trio Works at vFairs – 00:19:25 Post 2 – 13 Examples of Growth Loops – 00:20:28 → Invite-Based Loop – 00:20:32 → User-Generated Content Loop – 00:22:30 → Expert-Driven Loop – 00:25:30 → Personalized Insights – 00:26:56 → Referral Incentives – 00:29:05 → Multi-Party Goal Loop – 00:31:04 Ad (Linear) – 00:31:57 → Multi-Party Goal Loop Example Continued – 00:32:50 → Achievement-Driven Loop – 00:33:21 → Discussing Other Loops – 00:34:42 Post 3 – Six Languages of Product Management – 00:36:28 Why This Went Viral – 00:41:07 Aakash’s Turn – His Content Creation Process – 00:43:27 Aakash Post 1 – 5 Lessons from Netflix’s Decline – 00:46:24 Write from Experience or Just Research? – 00:48:26 Dealing with Comments – 00:49:19 Aakash Post 2 – “Roadmap Isn’t a Strategy” – 00:51:30 Aakash Post 3 – (Most Viral of All Time) – 00:53:39 Can AI Tools Help with Research for Creating Viral Content? – 00:57:34 How Aatir Manages a Full-Time Job & Content Creation – 01:00:19 How Aatir Designs Posts – 01:03:20 His Content Creation Workflow – 01:07:31 One Piece of Advice He’d Give to His Younger Self – 01:11:17 Final Notes – 01:15:48 Transcript: https://www.news.aakashg.com/p/aatir-abdul-rauf-podcast 💼 Check out our sponsors: WorkOS: Your app, enterprise ready - http://www.workos.com/aakash Linear: Plan and build products like the best - https://linear.app/partners/aakash Amplitude: Try their 2-min assessment of your company’s digital maturity - https://bit.ly/4hl25RG 👀 Where to find Aatir: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aatirar Newsletter: https://aatir.substack.com 👨‍💻 Where to find Aakash: Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/aakashg0 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aagupta/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aakashg0/ 🔑 Key Takeaways 1. There’s a new trio in town. We all grew up on the “PM + designer + engineer” model. He advocates for the new trio: PM, PMM, and Growth. It’s a very important concept to think of. PMs build, PMMs tell the story, Growth makes it scale. If even one of those is missing, good luck sustaining anything. 2. PMMs are the unsung heroes of real product impact. Most teams either ignore the role or treat it like launch copywriting. But without a PMM, users don’t understand the product. You can ship the most powerful feature ever but if no one knows it exists or why it matters, it’s worthless. 3. Growth isn’t the first thing; it’s the multiplier. You don’t bolt on a growth loop day one. You ship → PM & PMM find what clicks → then growth turns it into a loop. Premature growth is how startups/teams burn cash and lose trust. 4. PMF alone isn’t enough, you need sustainable PMF. You can hit PMF with a few power users… but what happens when the market shifts? You’ll not be able to sustain. So, always build products that can sustain themselves in the longer run. 5. Alignment is the only way to scale. The trio (PM, PMM, Growth) needs shared answers on: what vision are we chasing?, what’s our real North Star?, and where are users actually getting stuck? This kind of clarity among everyone saves months of confusion later. 6. You can’t copy-paste growth loops, you apply them to your context. He shared his 13 types of loops and literally you should have it on your desk if you do anything with growth. The real insight is pick one that supports your product and the whole ecosystem at the given moment. The one that fits your product’s natural behavior. If you try to force it, it will break. #productmanagement #productmanagers 🧠 About Product Growth: The world's largest podcast focused solely on product + growth, with over 167K listeners. Hosted by Aakash Gupta, who spent 16 years in PM, rising to VP of product, this 2x/ week show covers product and growth topics in depth. 🔔 Subscribe and like the video to support our content! And turn on the bell for notifications.

ARAatir Abdul RaufguestAGAakash Guptahost

May 4, 2025·1h 16m·Watch on YouTube ↗

📖 CHAPTERS

1. 1

   Episode premise: dissecting each other’s favorite LinkedIn posts

   Aakash and Aatir set up the episode: they’ll each pick three LinkedIn posts and break down why they worked, how they were created, and what made them resonate. They frame the conversation as a practical deep dive into writing, visuals, hooks, and distribution dynamics.

2. 2

   The “new trio” in product: PM + Product Marketing + Growth

   Aatir introduces a shift from the classic PM–Designer–Engineer trio to a new trio designed to scale sustainable product-market fit. With AI reducing build friction, he argues differentiation, positioning, and scalable acquisition/retention matter more than ever.

3. 3

   Why PMF is fragile: protecting the “magic moment”

   They discuss PMF as a dynamic equilibrium that can be disrupted by market shifts, competitors, and platform changes. Aatir explains the “magic moment” concept—one or two key aha experiences that must be preserved across product, messaging, and growth experiments.

4. 4

   Shared understanding across the trio: vision, priorities, metrics, obstacles

   Aatir lays out what the PM/PMM/Growth trio must align on to avoid rowing in different directions. He emphasizes vision, problem prioritization, the magic moment, north-star/product metrics, and adoption barriers/objections.

5. 5

   Role mantras and responsibilities: PM vs PMM vs Growth

   They translate the trio into concrete responsibilities and day-to-day activities. PMM owns positioning, messaging, launches, and channel strategy; Growth owns lifecycle optimization, experiments, retention hooks, and growth loops.

6. 6

   Alliance problems in orgs: breaking the “handoff” model

   Aatir explains the motivation behind the “new trio” post: product, PMM, and growth are often siloed with shallow handoffs. He argues PM and PMM should collaborate from discovery through launch, with growth joining once PMF signals exist.

7. 7

   Growth loops taxonomy: invite, UGC, reputation, expert-driven, and more

   Aatir walks through his post cataloging growth loops, using recognizable product examples. The goal is to show how loops create compounding acquisition by embedding sharing, discovery, or multi-user participation into the product experience.

8. 8

   When loops fail: incentives and motivation must match the user’s context

   They discuss referral incentives and why even classic loops can backfire if they feel spammy or low-value. Aatir shares an example of a telecom app prompting users to share a mundane purchase—highlighting that loops need authentic user motivation.

9. 9

   “Six Languages of Product Management”: PMs must be multilingual

   They unpack the collaborative post about PMs needing to speak multiple stakeholder “languages.” Aatir shares personal stories of learning business terminology and how humorous naming made the post memorable while still delivering a serious point.

10. 10

    Switching to Aakash’s posts: his content evolution and incentives

    Aakash explains how his writing evolved across eras: long-form company deep dives, then shorter daily LinkedIn posts to grow Substack, then a split free/paid model. He frames content strategy as downstream of incentives and audience willingness to pay.

11. 11

    Post teardown #1: Netflix decline thread—chart hook + fast research

    They break down Aakash’s “5 lessons from Netflix’s decline” post as a Twitter-to-LinkedIn repurpose. The chart served as the hook, and the five-point structure came from Twitter constraints (two tweets per point) and portability to LinkedIn.

12. 12

    Post teardown #2: ‘Your roadmap is not a product strategy’—simple visual wins

    Aakash shares how a disagreement with an existing framework (why/what/who/when/where/how) sparked the post. For LinkedIn’s image-post era, he created an ultra-simple visual in Google Docs, screenshot it, and paired it with clear conceptual framing.

13. 13

    Post teardown #3: Sriracha virality—story + dense details + AI-assisted hooks

    They analyze Aakash’s most viral LinkedIn post: a rich founder story, novelty at the time, and meticulous research packed into tight copy. Aakash reveals he used early GPT-4 via Bing to generate hook variations—showing AI as an enhancer, not a replacement.

14. 14

    Aatir’s creator workflow: balancing full-time work, Notion ideation, Canva systems

    Aatir describes how he sustains output while working full-time: capture ideas in Notion, write from momentum rather than a blank page, and build visuals first. He shows how brand consistency and reusable templates reduce effort and create instant recognizability.

15. 15

    Closing takeaway: be cross-functional, learn the business, think above your role

    They end with career advice for early PMs: avoid being trapped in shipping and execution alone. Learn sales, marketing, exec metrics, and customer objections (via CRM/call recordings) to contribute meaningfully to strategy and build products that work for the business.