John Egan - Pinterest

1. 7 Mistakes In Running A Growth Team
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John Egan
Engineering Manager @ Pinterest

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• US based retail shopping
loyalty app
• Led Growth Engineering team
• Grew from 1M to 8M users in 3
years
• Acquired for over $200M
• Visual search & discovery tool
• Eng manager for Growth Traffic
(Emails/Notifs, SEO, Paid,
Growth Platform)
• Grew from 40M to 200M MAUs
• Team’s experiments have
added millions of WAUs

3. 1. Tactical Mistakes
2. Team Mistakes
3. Strategic Mistakes

4. Tactical Mistakes
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5. Just Looking At
Percentage
Gains
Mistake #1
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6. Example
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Metric Experiment 1 Experiment 2
WAU Lift 3% 60%
Email Recipients 1,000,000 1,000,000

7. Example
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Metric Experiment 1 Experiment 2
WAU Lift 3% 60%
Email Recipients 1,000,000 1,000,000
Current WAU 500,000 5,000
Absolute WAU Added 15,000 3,000

8. Looking Only At
Overall
Experiment
Results
Mistake #2
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9. Getting Misled
By Survivorship
Bias
Mistake #3
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10. !10Months after signup
Unsubscribes By Month After Signup
NumberofUnsubscribes

11. Team Mistakes
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12. Not Tracking
Your Progress
To Goal
Mistake #4
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13. Be Democratic
Instead of Data
Driven
Mistake #5
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14. Strategic Mistakes
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15. Investing In
Weaknesses
Instead of
Strengths
Mistake #6
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16. Hoping New
Features Will
Drive Growth
Mistake #7
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17. When Do Features Drive Growth?
1) Broad adoption by the user base
2) Step-change improvement in delivering value for the product’s core mission
3) Creates an engagement loop
Successful examples: Snapchat Stories, Facebook Newsfeed, etc
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18. Snapchat Stories
2:50 PM 100%
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19. 1. Use absolute numbers, not percentage gains
2. Use segmentation when analyzing experiments
3. Don’t get fooled by survivor bias
4. Keep the team focused on the goal
5. Be data driven, not a democracy
6. Double down on your strengths, not your weaknesses
7. Understand when features drive growth

20. John Egan
Growth Blog: jwegan.com
Email: me@jwegan.com
Twitter: @jwegan_com
Pinterest: pinterest.com/jwegan
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