Must growth metrics and strategy be preceded by an explicit understanding of the qualitative growth model (product-channel fit, channel-model fit)?

Hila Qu · Jan 18, 2023

The first step in hiring a growth person is a non-standard job description, which requires the founder to first do the homework of defining their growth model and initial growth loops and to lay out early KPIs and focus areas.

The growth model determines what expertise you should be looking for — e.g. a fintech founder who had already proven paid payback needed someone with strong paid expertise purely to amplify it

25:21 20Growth: When To Make Your First Growth Hire? How To Structure the Hiring Process for Growth? Five Core Things the Best Growth Hires Do in the First Week? What to Expect New Growth Hires to Achieve in the First 30 and 90 Days with Hila Qu, Growth Advisor

Mike Duboe · Feb 15, 2023

Before touching a spreadsheet, founders should write down a conceptual growth model describing the mechanic by which their product actually grows

The North Star metric falls out of understanding the mechanic driving the main metric you care about, which for most businesses ladders up to revenue

Scope: the right North Star will evolve over time; for some companies it might be users early on

17:33 20Growth: Top Five Growth Lessons Scaling Stitchfix to IPO, How to Master the Art of Paid Marketing, Why CAC/LTV is a BS Metric & How To Use Payback Period as an Alternative to CAC/LTV with Mike Duboe, Partner @ Greylock

Adam Grenier · Mar 15, 2023

A simple four-step 'vanilla' growth loop is the right anchor for a startup's growth model

It tests whether the loop actually closes back on itself, and gives four elements against which every planning and prioritization meeting can check whether work is actually helping the business

24:28 20Growth: The Inside Story to Uber's Hypergrowth Scaling; What Worked, What Did Not? | Spending a $1BN Budget at Uber and Why China was the Wild West for Uber | Why You Do Not Need a Growth Team with Adam Grenier

Brian Balfour · Aug 16, 2023

The biggest mistake across growth is not having an explicit hypothesis for how your product grows — a growth model, which is distinct from a business or financial model

A financial model asks how a dollar in returns more than a dollar out, while a growth model asks how a user in returns more than one user out, and the levers between those two points are entirely different

Scope: must come before decisions about metrics, hiring or strategy

7:23 20Growth: Why Product-Market Fit is Not Enough, Revenue Does Not Create Usage, Metrics Must Be Before Strategy, Why it is Always Better to Concentrate than Diversify Marketing Channels and Secrets from Hubspot's Growth Engine with Brian Balfour @ Reforge

Hila Qu · Jan 18, 2023

The job description should state a North Star metric — typically revenue for B2B and active users for B2C — plus initial focus areas such as onboarding, activation and free-to-paid conversion.

Naming the focus areas attracts candidates with the right expertise and forces the founder's own thinking to be clear

26:29 20Growth: When To Make Your First Growth Hire? How To Structure the Hiring Process for Growth? Five Core Things the Best Growth Hires Do in the First Week? What to Expect New Growth Hires to Achieve in the First 30 and 90 Days with Hila Qu, Growth Advisor

Brian Balfour · Aug 16, 2023

You cannot know what your metrics should be until you understand the qualitative underpinnings of growth, such as product-channel fit and channel-model fit

0:00 20Growth: Why Product-Market Fit is Not Enough, Revenue Does Not Create Usage, Metrics Must Be Before Strategy, Why it is Always Better to Concentrate than Diversify Marketing Channels and Secrets from Hubspot's Growth Engine with Brian Balfour @ Reforge

Howie Liu · Aug 25, 2023

The adage that second-time founders think about distribution is too simple: the real task is still product market fit, but finding a product strategy that marries with a go-to-market model suited to that product's dynamics.

Different product shapes — bottoms-up viral vs. team-centric vs. single-user — lend themselves to different go-to-market models, so product and motion must be designed together.

2:53 Product strategy must marry a go to market model suited to the products specific dynamics

Brian Balfour · Aug 16, 2023

Many founders don't actually understand their growth machine — a tell is being unable to draw a clear picture of how the product grows — and identifying the constraint requires mapping metrics to each step of that picture and testing which metric the output is most sensitive to

A horizontal product's strength — being usable for many things — makes it hard to know which use case to activate a new user on, whereas a vertical product has one known use case; once activated, a viral horizontal product spreads easily

10:47 Diagnose growth constraint by mapping metrics to funnel and testing sensitivity

Brian Balfour · Aug 16, 2023

The biggest misconception about growth is that it is one thing; there are different growth systems suited to different businesses, and talent and metrics must be mapped to the system you're running

Treating growth as a single thing is like describing engineering as a single discipline — you lose all the substance

47:49 Growth is not monolithic different systems require mapped talent and metrics