1.
The Growth Team
How to Build a High Performance
Growth Team

2.
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

3.
Growth Pyramid
Scale
Growth
Stacking the
Odds
Product/Market Fit

4.
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

5.
Growth Pyramid
Scale
Growth
Stacking the
Odds
Product/Market Fit

6.
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”

7.
Growth Pyramid
Scale
Growth
Stacking the
Odds
Product/Market Fit

8.
Scaling Growth
Team
Process

9.
Scaling Growth
Team
Process

10.
Team: Impact of Growth Teams in SV
$274B
$27B
$50B
$10B+
$11B
$24B+

11.
Team: Facebook Growth Team Starts
Growth Team Started at
Facebook

12.
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

13.
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)

14.
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

15.
2011 Twitter Accelerated Testing
0.5 tests/week 10 tests/week

16.
2015 GH Accelerated Testing
GH accelerated testing to 3+ per week after growth
plateaued

17.
Example Winning Test
• Moved email
collector to top
• Increased emails
collected 700%

18.
Double Down Tests
• Step 2 of registration • Improved design/text

19.
Results: Step 2 of Registration
• 22% boost in sign ups

20.
Results: Improved Design/Text
Test +44.5%
Control

21.
Scaling Growth
Team
Process

22.
Team Needs a Testing Process
Unbridled
Ideation
Prioritize
backlog
Launch
Tests
Capture
learning

23.
Unbridled Ideation
Unbridled
Ideation
Prioritize
backlog
Launch
Tests
Capture
learning

24.
Unbridled Ideation Details
• Unbridled ideation from full team
• Ideas across all vectors
• Individual and team accountability
Acquisition Referral
Activation Revenue
Retention

25.
Prioritize Backlog
Unbridled
Ideation
Prioritize
backlog
Launch
Tests
Capture
learning

26.
Formalize Ideas in Experiment Doc
• Include research, hypothesis, target lever…

27.
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?

28.
High Tempo Testing
Unbridled
Ideation
Prioritize
backlog
Launch
Tests
Capture
learning

29.
Test at High Tempo
• Tempo quickly identifies opportunities
• Weekly growth meeting drives tempo

30.
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

31.
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

32.
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

33.
Capture Learning
Unbridled
Ideation
Prioritize
backlog
Launch
tests
Capture
learning

34.
Capture Learning Details
• Every test leads to learning
• Ensure transparent sharing/access

35.
The Growth Silver Bullet?

36.
Team + Process = Silver Bullet
Unbridled
ideation
Prioritize
backlog
Launch
tests
Capture
learning

37.
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

38.
Thank You
sellis@GrowthHackers.com