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
- 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
- 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
- Software Engineers
- Need at least one, but can have multiple depending on team needs
- Responsible for implementing experiments
- Marketing Specialists
- Not always in a growth team, but highly recommended
- Coordinates well with software engineers to create full-stack experiments
- 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
- 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.
- Data Analysis and Insight Gathering
- Idea Generation
- Experiment Prioritization
- Running the Experiments