This document discusses how to establish a growth team within an enterprise business. It recommends starting small by focusing on organic retention and showing early wins. It also suggests recruiting team members based on growth mindset over skills, forming a dedicated squad rather than separate team, and prioritizing experiments to move key metrics like activation, retention and acquisition. The growth team's process would involve experiment planning, prioritization of hypotheses, and reviewing results to determine what was learned.

1. Growth in Unexpected Places—
How to Recruit and Launch a
Growth Team at an Enterprise
Business
Thibault Imbert, Adobe Spark

2. Growth in Unexpected Places
“How to Recruit and Launch a Growth Team at an
Enterprise Business”
Thibault Imbert,
Head of Growth, Adobe Spark
@thibault_imbert

3. Who is this guy?
Started as a web designer
Developer
Technical sales
Product Manager
Growth

4. I wanted to be that guy

5. I wanted to be that guy
B game

6. I wanted to be that guy
B gameA game

7. What is Spark?
Adobe Spark

8. What is Spark?
Pros Market Expansion

9. What is Spark?
Adobe Spark
Spark PostSpark PageSpark Video

10. Before everything…

11. It starts with organic retention
You can’t grow a crappy product

12. If everyone is doing it, no one really does
Growth

13. We all care about
Growth!
What we saw

14. We all care about
Growth!
Release/Launch
What we saw

15. We all care about
Growth!
Release/Launch
Dammit, let’s
ship this!
What we saw

16. We all care about
Growth!
Release/Launch
Dammit, let’s
ship this!
Revenue
Activation
Retention
Acquisition
What we saw

17. We all care about
Growth!
Release/Launch
Dammit, let’s
ship this!
We all care about
Growth again!
Revenue
Activation
Retention
Acquisition
What we saw

18. 1.0 attempt
Any ETA on the new
instrumentation?
PM/PMM
We have these
features for the June
release first
This will have to go on
the backlog
PM
EM
Product

19. 1.0 attempt

20. This just does not work

21. Executive sponsorship

22. Start small, show early wins

23. Outside of Product
In Product

24. Start small

25. getfeedback.com
Start small

26. getfeedback.com
Start small

27. Start small
Impact of the “Follow us” CTA
on followers growth

28. Buy-in on the mission
Don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness
Ask for forgiveness with results
Management support

29. Why a dedicated team?

30. No context-switching
Accountable
Empathy
Empowered
Dedicated team

31. Recruitment

32. Mindset > Skills
Driven by results, not tech
Customer empathy
Determined
Characteristics

33. Build vs Buy
Test before building
3rd Party -> Homegrown

34. So, you have a team now…

35. Growth Product
2.0 attempt
We have code ready
we need to checkin
We have this
experiment we would like
to run!
PM
Engineer
Who are you? Let me
see your code
Great! Do you
have resources to make it
happen?
PM
Engineer

36. Challenges with a separate team
Why are you in my code base?
Why do you get to take short cuts?
We are already planning on doing this!
That’s not how we work!

37. Two words: Build trust

38. A squad, not a team
Still part of the product team
Tour of duty
Easy org setup
Velocity

39. 3.0 attempt
Engineer Engineer
Growth Product
Hey Irina, can you
review my PR?
Sure, let me check!

40. Squad composition
PM PD EM EngineersPGM DS

41. Launch

42. Organization structure
Product
Spark
Video
Spark Page Spark Post
Spark Core

43. Organization structure
Product
Growth
Growth
Marketing
(PMM)
Spark
Video
Spark Page Spark Post
Spark Core
Growth Squad
(PM, PD, PGM, EM, Eng, DS)
Corporate
Marketing
(PMM)

44. Process
Experiment Pipeline
(lever, hypothesis, ICE
prioritization)

45. Process
Experiment Pipeline
(lever, hypothesis, ICE
prioritization)
Experiment Plan
(control vs variant, baseline,
metric)

46. Process
Experiment Pipeline
(lever, hypothesis, ICE
prioritization)
Backlog
(sprint planning, link to
experiment)
Experiment Plan
(control vs variant, baseline,
metric)

47. Process
Ship Meeting
(stakeholders signoff)
Experiment Plan
(control vs variant, baseline,
metric)
Experiment Pipeline
(lever, hypothesis, ICE
prioritization)
Backlog
(sprint planning, link to
experiment)

48. Process
Ship
(soft launched)
Ship Meeting
(stakeholders signoff)
Experiment Plan
(control vs variant, baseline,
metric)
Experiment Pipeline
(lever, hypothesis, ICE
prioritization)
Backlog
(sprint planning, link to
experiment)

49. Process
Experiment
Results Review
(what did we learn)
Ship
(soft launched)
Ship Meeting
(stakeholders signoff)
Experiment Plan
(control vs variant, baseline,
metric)
Experiment Pipeline
(lever, hypothesis, ICE
prioritization)
Backlog
(sprint planning, link to
experiment)

50. Our stack
Pipeline Planning Jira

51. Examples

52. NPS

53. Dashboard in delighted.com

54. Sync with Slack

55. Start a thread for follow up

56. Landing Pages

57. SEO landing pages

58. SEO landing pages stack

59. SEO landing pages stack

60. SEO landing pages stack

61. Data democratization

62. Automated reports on Slack

63. Summary
It starts with organic retention
Start small, show some early wins
Focus on numbers, not tech
Build a squad, not a team
Mindset > Skills
Ideate, prioritize and move the numbers!
Spread the culture

64. Thank you!
Follow me @thibault_imbert
(we are hiring)

65. Want video access
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