The Growth Team

How to Build a High Performance

Growth Team

About Me

• Early career: Led marketing from launch to IPO (Uproar

and LogMeIn)

• Shifted focus to Early Stage: interim growth roles

(Xobni, Dropbox, Eventbrite, Lookout)

• Now: Founder/CEO of GrowthHackers

Growth Pyramid

Scale Growth

Stacking the Odds

Product/Market Fit

Product Market Fit

• Most important factor for driving growth

• “Must have” for large addressable market

• Ask users: “How would you feel if you could no longer use this product?”

– Very disappointed (40%+)

– Somewhat disappointed

– Not disappointed

– N/A – I already stopped using

Growth Pyramid

Scale Growth

Stacking the Odds

Product/Market Fit

Stacking the Odds for Growth

Understand “must have” users• Who are they?

• Why is it a must have (key benefit)?

• How are they using product?

Optimize value delivery engine• Relevant, powerful promise

• Onboarding to “must have experience”

Growth Pyramid

Scale Growth

Stacking the Odds

Product/Market Fit

Scaling Growth

Team

Process

Scaling Growth

Team

Process

Team: Impact of Growth Teams in SV

$274B

$27B$50B

$10B+

$11B$24B+

Team: Facebook Growth Team Starts

Growth Team Started at

Facebook

Growth Team Drives Testing

• Day 1 – No certainty how you will grow

• More Testing = More Discovery

• Rapid testing across all vectors

Acquisition Referral

Activation Revenue

Retention

Resurrection

Building Growth Team

• Core growth team can start ad hoc

• Add dedicated people to core team as needed to hit tempo goals

(PM, engineer, design…)

• Contract temporary specialists for unproven channels (FTE for

proven)

Example: Need for High Tempo

• Twitter started growth team in 2009

• Growth slowed in 2010 when team averaged only 1 – 2

tests/month*

• In 2011 accelerated to 10+ tests/week

*Satya Patel - Agile Marketing Meetup Presentation Q&A

2011 Twitter Accelerated Testing

0.5 tests/week 10 tests/week

2015 GH Accelerated Testing

GH accelerated testing to 3+ per week after growth

plateaued

Example Winning Test

• Moved email

collector to top

• Increased emails

collected 700%

Double Down Tests

• Step 2 of registration • Improved design/text

Results: Step 2 of Registration

• 22% boost in sign ups

Results: Improved Design/Text

Test +44.5%

Control

Scaling Growth

Team

Process

Team Needs a Testing Process

Unbridled Ideation

Prioritize backlog

Launch Tests

Capture learning

Unbridled Ideation

Unbridled Ideation

Prioritize backlog

Launch Tests

Capture learning

Unbridled Ideation Details

• Unbridled ideation from full team

• Ideas across all vectors

• Individual and team accountability

Acquisition Referral

Activation Revenue

Retention

Prioritize Backlog

Unbridled Ideation

Prioritize backlog

Launch Tests

Capture learning

Formalize Ideas in Experiment Doc

• Include research, hypothesis, target lever…

Prioritize by ICE Score

Assign 1 – 10 score for impact, confidence and Ease (10 best)

• Impact: If it works, what is potential impact?

• Confidence: Evidence that it will work?

• Ease: How easy is it to test your hypothesis?

High Tempo Testing

Unbridled Ideation

Prioritize backlog

Launch Tests

Capture learning

Test at High Tempo

• Tempo quickly identifies opportunities

• Weekly growth meeting drives tempo

Weekly Growth Meeting

• No brainstorming (that’s rest of week)

• Nominate ideas to test before meeting

• Optimize process to hit testing target

* GH weekly growth meeting includes CEO, CTO, VP Product, Head of

Growth, Head of Design, Growth Engineer, and Analyst

Weekly Growth Meeting Agenda

15 min: KPI review & update focus area

10 min: Review last week’s testing sprint

15 min: Key lessons learned from analyzed tests

15 min: Select tests for this week’s sprint

5 min: Check growth of idea backlog

Set Weekly Test Launch Goal

• Start small (i.e. 2 tests per week)

• Right size tests to hit goal

• Add more ambitious tests

• Increase weekly test goal

Capture Learning

Unbridled Ideation

Prioritize backlog

Launch tests

Capture learning

Capture Learning Details

• Every test leads to learning

• Ensure transparent sharing/access

The Growth Silver Bullet?

Team + Process = Silver Bullet

Unbridled ideation

Prioritize backlog

Launch tests

Capture learning

Ultimate Goal: Growth Culture

• CEO must be on board for day one (recognize & praise

early participants)

• Patience to get others on board

• Transparent about results and process

• Everyone keep eye out for growth opps

Thank You

sellis@GrowthHackers.com