The Growth-Oriented Startup

The Who

Startup Teams can vary in size from 4 or 5 to well over 100, but must include the following components

  1. The Growth Lead
    • In early stage startups, this is typically the founder
    • Responsible for managing the team, and brings the enthusiasm
    • Final decider on what growth experiments are run
    • Creates and keeps track of company goals & metrics, and whether team is meeting them
    • Runs a growth meeting once a week to review goals, experiment results, and progress
    • Must be focused on a single goal that typically correlates to core metrics, and keeps the process from being derailed
  2. The Product Manager/Producer
    • At early stage startups, this is typically also filled by the founder
    • "CEO of the product"
    • Familiar with the product lifecycle, and facilitates the product/feature release cycle
  3. Software Engineers
    • Need at least one, but can have multiple depending on team needs
    • Responsible for implementing experiments
  4. Marketing Specialists
    • Not always in a growth team, but highly recommended
    • Coordinates well with software engineers to create full-stack experiments
  5. Data Analysts
    • Responsible for deriving observations about customer and product behavior, that will eventually be organized into a formal growth experiment
    • May not be a full time member, especially in small teams
    • In early teams, a software engineer of marketing specialist may be able to play this role, if they are already familiar with working with data
    • DO NOT OUTSOURCE DATA, DO NOT PUT IT ONTO THE INTERN WHO KNOWS HOW TO USE GOOGLE ANALYTICS
  6. Product Designers
    • Name of this role depends on industry, product designer, UX designer, graphic designer, brand designer, etc.
    • Should have a good understanding of user psychology, and how to convert user behavior into engaging experiences
    • Responsible for collecting qualitative user information, that can then be shared with the team

The How

The overall goal of a growth team is to find and exploit growth opportunities, by implementing a rapid experimentation process. The process is a continuous cycle that is composed of the steps below. The cycle is pushed forward every week through a weekly growth meeting, headed by the growth leader.

  1. Data Analysis and Insight Gathering
  2. Idea Generation
  3. Experiment Prioritization
  4. Running the Experiments