GitHub Copilot

A clearer, higher-contrast pricing page lifted free and paid signups by over 20%. GitHub redesigned its pricing page to increase visual contrast between tiers, showing more features in the higher tiers. It also emphasized the features customers value most, used vibrant colors and removed an outdated tier. Free and paid signups both rose by more than 20%.

The changes shipped together, so the gain is not split by change. Contrast made the value gap between plans visible at a glance. Features were chosen to match user priorities rather than listed equally. Dropping the outdated tier left fewer choices to weigh. The lift reached the free tier as well as the paid ones, so a clearer pricing page can help the whole funnel.

abtest.design

GitHub product reviews ran on demos, not memos. Max Schoening says to build a janky demo instead of writing a PRD for the first 10% of a project. That first 10% is now nearly free, and a demo gives people something to react to early, the opposite of waterfall.

He suggests sending off 10 agents to explore 10 paths and seeing which was right. The caveat: the last 10% is still 90% of the work.

Lenny's Podcast▶ 20:36

GitHub designers prototyped in code to master their material. Around 10% of the top contributors to GitHub's product were designers, even before LLMs. The aim was not production code but understanding the material, such as how an agent loop works.

Schoening would rather have a designer who understands agent loops than one who can only tweak styles. Production contributions tend to follow once people are awakened to the medium.

Lenny's Podcast▶ 14:13

Mature-product teams should stop being precious about shipping. After a hit first act, teams worry about upsetting users. Schoening tells them users get more upset if you do not innovate than if you accidentally break something, and that the people who built act one can build act two.

He applied this at GitHub and at Notion, and argues cheaper experimentation now lets teams increase shots on goal.

Lenny's Podcast▶ 35:23

The pull request is a tiny core that is exceptionally good. Schoening names the GitHub pull request among products built on one tiny superpower, alongside iPhone multitouch, Notion blocks, Heroku's git push and Dropbox's menu bar sync icon.

His advice is to find that core and push everything else back, since adding one more thing to finally make a product great never works.

Lenny's Podcast▶ 23:07

Actions shipped without good package management, and the ecosystem paid for it. Schoening points to GitHub Actions as a case where a missing foundation has cost the ecosystem.

Lenny's Podcast

Claude Code accounts for 4% of public GitHub commits. Boris Cherny, head of Claude Code, cites this figure and calls it a floor because private repositories are not counted.

Lenny's Podcast