AppsFlyer's David Llewellyn discusses growth mindset with leading mobile marketing experts: Andy Carvell (Partner at Phiture), Georgy Natsvilishvili (Head of Organic Growth at Glovo) and Dora Trostanetsky (Senior Manager, Growth & Optimization)
A VP growth is usually more about the metrics whereas a VP product tends to balance the growth initiatives and the product initiatives. You can compromise the user experience if your growth team is too agressive.
If you're acquiring a lot of users your DAU might be looking great because you are getting new people in all the time. But don't base your decision on this: dig deeper and find what makes people retain and which engagement metrics you should be tracking.
Getting the right people in the team who actually want to work on growth is one of the main challenges. You want to vet the people you're putting together for the "growth mindset", data driven and excited about moving metrics.
Second challenge is to evangelize the growth mindset throughout the rest of the organization: explain why there is a need to test and learn. It helps in the early days to pick projects where you have a good chance of success and take every chance they get to explain what failed and what it means for the company in real terms.
A lot of startup founders and companies try to jump to hypergrowth but they probably have a couple of years and finding better product/market fit before they can think about growing the growth team.
Choosing the right growth team model not only unlocks growth, but also strengthens culture.
A VP growth is usually more about the metrics whereas a VP product tends to balance the growth initiatives and the product initiatives. You can compromise the user experience if your growth team is too agressive.
If you're acquiring a lot of users your DAU might be looking great because you are getting new people in all the time. But don't base your decision on this: dig deeper and find what makes people retain and which engagement metrics you should be tracking.
Getting the right people in the team who actually want to work on growth is one of the main challenges. You want to vet the people you're putting together for the "growth mindset", data driven and excited about moving metrics.
Second challenge is to evangelize the growth mindset throughout the rest of the organization: explain why there is a need to test and learn. It helps in the early days to pick projects where you have a good chance of success and take every chance they get to explain what failed and what it means for the company in real terms.
A lot of startup founders and companies try to jump to hypergrowth but they probably have a couple of years and finding better product/market fit before they can think about growing the growth team.
Choosing the right growth team model not only unlocks growth, but also strengthens culture.
A VP growth is usually more about the metrics whereas a VP product tends to balance the growth initiatives and the product initiatives. You can compromise the user experience if your growth team is too agressive.
If you're acquiring a lot of users your DAU might be looking great because you are getting new people in all the time. But don't base your decision on this: dig deeper and find what makes people retain and which engagement metrics you should be tracking.
Getting the right people in the team who actually want to work on growth is one of the main challenges. You want to vet the people you're putting together for the "growth mindset", data driven and excited about moving metrics.
Second challenge is to evangelize the growth mindset throughout the rest of the organization: explain why there is a need to test and learn. It helps in the early days to pick projects where you have a good chance of success and take every chance they get to explain what failed and what it means for the company in real terms.
A lot of startup founders and companies try to jump to hypergrowth but they probably have a couple of years and finding better product/market fit before they can think about growing the growth team.
Choosing the right growth team model not only unlocks growth, but also strengthens culture.
Notes for this resource are currently being transferred and will be available soon.
Brian Balfour's definition
In 2015 Andy went to see several companies (Airbnb, Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest, Etsy) to understand how they were approaching growth.
There is no one single way to do growth. Each company has different problems and focus areas depending on when they set up the growth team, the size of the company.
Currently 1 growth team, responsible for both acquisition and retention topics. They do not slice the user journey yet.
Georgy feels like this model is a bit outdated ("2015") and doesn't make sense right now. He feels like the "project manager" role is missing because product managers can not deal both with a lot of projects + managing the engineering.
Before there was no one dedicated to technical marketing projects and the tech team was focused on operations and they could not get the resources needed. It was also hard to get product changes like SDK implementations, etc.
So they decided to create a tech team where the main aim was to satisfied the online marketing needs. That team became more complex and cross functional, working on a lot of projects. 2 main phases:
Initially:
Transition:
Initially at SoundCloud the growth team was reporting to VP product and had design/engineering/marketing. Andy led the team as a product manager "a marketer in a product clothing".
[💎@22:21] A VP growth is usually more about the metrics whereas a VP product tends to balance the growth initiatives and the product initiatives. You can compromise the user experience if your growth team is too agressive.
At SoundCloud growth still belongs to product and VP Product balances growth and product roadmaps.
Regarding metrics they look beyond the "vanity metrics" like DAU/MAU but they try to identify metrics that are showing retention and engagement: we want people to find music and listen to music. Some metrics that show users find what they are looking for:
It requires dedicated resources. You should not try this too early. You want to look at which phase you are in: Traction, Transition or Growth (cf. first slide at the top of the notes). When you're at the growth stage you already have:
[💎@43:34] A lot of startup founders and companies try to jump to hypergrowth but they probably have a couple of years and finding better product/market fit before they can think about growing the growth team.
If it's too early and you haven't fixed the basic stuff you will not benefit from a growth team.
[💎@52:42] Choosing the right growth team model not only unlocks growth, but also strengthens culture.
Brian Balfour's definition
In 2015 Andy went to see several companies (Airbnb, Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest, Etsy) to understand how they were approaching growth.
There is no one single way to do growth. Each company has different problems and focus areas depending on when they set up the growth team, the size of the company.
Currently 1 growth team, responsible for both acquisition and retention topics. They do not slice the user journey yet.
Georgy feels like this model is a bit outdated ("2015") and doesn't make sense right now. He feels like the "project manager" role is missing because product managers can not deal both with a lot of projects + managing the engineering.
Before there was no one dedicated to technical marketing projects and the tech team was focused on operations and they could not get the resources needed. It was also hard to get product changes like SDK implementations, etc.
So they decided to create a tech team where the main aim was to satisfied the online marketing needs. That team became more complex and cross functional, working on a lot of projects. 2 main phases:
Initially:
Transition:
Initially at SoundCloud the growth team was reporting to VP product and had design/engineering/marketing. Andy led the team as a product manager "a marketer in a product clothing".
[💎@22:21] A VP growth is usually more about the metrics whereas a VP product tends to balance the growth initiatives and the product initiatives. You can compromise the user experience if your growth team is too agressive.
At SoundCloud growth still belongs to product and VP Product balances growth and product roadmaps.
Regarding metrics they look beyond the "vanity metrics" like DAU/MAU but they try to identify metrics that are showing retention and engagement: we want people to find music and listen to music. Some metrics that show users find what they are looking for:
It requires dedicated resources. You should not try this too early. You want to look at which phase you are in: Traction, Transition or Growth (cf. first slide at the top of the notes). When you're at the growth stage you already have:
[💎@43:34] A lot of startup founders and companies try to jump to hypergrowth but they probably have a couple of years and finding better product/market fit before they can think about growing the growth team.
If it's too early and you haven't fixed the basic stuff you will not benefit from a growth team.
[💎@52:42] Choosing the right growth team model not only unlocks growth, but also strengthens culture.
Brian Balfour's definition
In 2015 Andy went to see several companies (Airbnb, Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest, Etsy) to understand how they were approaching growth.
There is no one single way to do growth. Each company has different problems and focus areas depending on when they set up the growth team, the size of the company.
Currently 1 growth team, responsible for both acquisition and retention topics. They do not slice the user journey yet.
Georgy feels like this model is a bit outdated ("2015") and doesn't make sense right now. He feels like the "project manager" role is missing because product managers can not deal both with a lot of projects + managing the engineering.
Before there was no one dedicated to technical marketing projects and the tech team was focused on operations and they could not get the resources needed. It was also hard to get product changes like SDK implementations, etc.
So they decided to create a tech team where the main aim was to satisfied the online marketing needs. That team became more complex and cross functional, working on a lot of projects. 2 main phases:
Initially:
Transition:
Initially at SoundCloud the growth team was reporting to VP product and had design/engineering/marketing. Andy led the team as a product manager "a marketer in a product clothing".
[💎@22:21] A VP growth is usually more about the metrics whereas a VP product tends to balance the growth initiatives and the product initiatives. You can compromise the user experience if your growth team is too agressive.
At SoundCloud growth still belongs to product and VP Product balances growth and product roadmaps.
Regarding metrics they look beyond the "vanity metrics" like DAU/MAU but they try to identify metrics that are showing retention and engagement: we want people to find music and listen to music. Some metrics that show users find what they are looking for:
It requires dedicated resources. You should not try this too early. You want to look at which phase you are in: Traction, Transition or Growth (cf. first slide at the top of the notes). When you're at the growth stage you already have:
[💎@43:34] A lot of startup founders and companies try to jump to hypergrowth but they probably have a couple of years and finding better product/market fit before they can think about growing the growth team.
If it's too early and you haven't fixed the basic stuff you will not benefit from a growth team.
[💎@52:42] Choosing the right growth team model not only unlocks growth, but also strengthens culture.
