Sean EllisCEO / GrowthHackers

Building a Company-Wide Growth Culture

SaaStr Annual 2016

Everyone Wants Explosive Growth

@SeanEllis @GrowthHackers2

But Extreme Competition for Attention

$0

$20

$40

$60

$80

$100

$120

$140

$160 3.5x

US Online AdSpend per User

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Channels in Constant Flux

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James Currier

@SeanEllis @GrowthHackers

Solution: Company-Wide Growth Effort

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Product

External Channels

Promise

1st Experience

Ongoing Experience

Acquisition

Activation Revenue Retention Referral

biz dev/APIs

Marketing

Growth Team

@SeanEllis @GrowthHackers

Growth Company Requirements

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Broad Participation

Weekly Cadence

Transparent Learning

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Broad Participation

Weekly Cadence

Transparent Learning

External Experts

Internal Experts

Ideas Tests Results

Core Growth Team Drives Process

Ideas from Full Team & External Experts

@SeanEllis @GrowthHackers8

Goal: Build a Large Backlog of Ideas

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

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Keep general contributor ideas simple (no ICE)

Example: Growth Ideas from Dropbox

Revenue test

Referral test

Retention/Revenue

test

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12@SeanEllis @GrowthHackers

Broad Participation

Weekly Cadence

Transparent Learning

Growth Team Manages Cadence

• Start with growth master + ad hoc team

• Ad hoc team: designer, analyst, engineer, ideally key execs (CEO, VP Product…)

• Add dedicated growth roles as needed

• Weekly test launch goals and weekly growth meeting

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Weekly Growth Meeting Agenda

• 15 Min: Growth metrics, issues and opportunities

• 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

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Goal: Test at High Tempo

• No certainty about how you will grow

• Rapid Testing across all vectors

• More testing = More discovery

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Acquisition Referral Activation Revenue Retention Resurrection

@SeanEllis @GrowthHackers

Example: Twitter Increased Tempo

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Prioritize by ICE Score & Focus Area

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Manage Testing

• Assign each test to a project manager

• Anyone on growth team can be a project mgr

• Run tests sufficient time

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Analyze Results

• Always ask why

• Systematize on learning

• Informs follow up tests

• Revisit past programs

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20@SeanEllis @GrowthHackers

Broad Participation

Weekly Cadence

Transparent Learning

Every Test Leads to Learning• Share all results with team (not just wins)

• New ideas requires access to past learning

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Example: Past Learning Leads to a Win

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Slides

Videos • Learning: Embeds = longer sessions

• Engineering solution: oEmbed (same action more embeds)

• Results: 41% more embeds

Final Thought: Focus on Value Delivery

• Value delivery drives sustainable growth

• Help right users get value from your product

• Easy to align full team around value delivery

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24@SeanEllis @GrowthHackers

Join GH Projects Private Beta at Projects.GrowthHackers.com

Purpose-Built Growth Collaboration System:

1) Team Ideation 2) Prioritize Testing 3) Capture Learning

Join us at GrowthHackers Conference Feb 18th. Save with Code SaaStr50