Brian Balfour
19 statements across 2 episodes · 6 bullish · 2 bearish · 2 people on the record · first statement Mar 4, 2016 by Hiten Shah · said 12 times in 7 episodes since 2016 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Brian Balfour's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Phil Carter (3), Kieran Flanagan (2), Ely Lerner (2), Matt Swulinski (1), Joost de Valk (1), Hiten Shah (1), Harry Stebbings (1), Alex Schultz (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 3 mentions in 1 episode
2023 5 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- Ely Lerner: Should Startups Hire Advisors & How much should they be paid? | E1075 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Joost de Valk: How I Founded Yoast; The Ultimate Guide to SEO; The Threat of AI | E1000 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Meta CMO Alex Schultz: Competing Against TikTok & Snap; Why Reels Failed at First | E985 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 2 mentions in 1 episode
Everything said about Brian Balfour, oldest first
Mar 4, 2016 positive
Aug 16, 2023
Aug 16, 2023
Aug 16, 2023
Aug 16, 2023 positive
Balfour: Direct messaging on WhatsApp remains a massive growth factor globally
“Like in some parts of the world, like WhatsApp, for example, is just a massive growth factor for folks. I've looked at companies that are like complete, their entire growth strategy is on WhatsApp. So like that, that type of direct messaging, I think still, st…”
Aug 16, 2023
Balfour: Company growth strategies consist of a limited set menu
“There's not an infinite world of growth options. It's actually it's fairly well defined and constrained, and that's something that I've, like, I've learned pretty dramatically, especially through Reforge, where I get to see inside, you know, the growth of thou…”
Aug 16, 2023
Balfour: Growth loops mirror compound interest and require long-term conviction
“When you look at a lot of the highest flying growth strategies, right, what is underneath them is what we call every forge growth loops, where other people call flywheels, but they're basically systems that work like compound interest, right? They're things th…”
Aug 16, 2023
Aug 16, 2023 positive
Balfour names Winters, Contractor, and Cabane as top growth practitioners
“Strategically would be Casey winners. The best person that has thinks about the psychological elements of growth would easily be Darius contractor. The person like a very specialty who I consider like a mad scientist is I call him G, but it's Guillaume Cabane.”
Aug 16, 2023 positive
Aug 16, 2023
Balfour: 70% of early growth leaders came from Facebook social gaming
“I made my way into growth where I would say, like, 70% of, like, the growth OGs made into growth, which was the early Facebook platform social gaming. Days. If you look at like some of the top people in growth, there's like a lineage. It's like almost like a c…”
Aug 16, 2023 positive
Balfour: Market chaos creates growth arbitrage opportunities for startups
“Chaos is actually good for growth people, because within that chaos lives these arbitrage opportunities, these new things that nobody else has figured out, and those sparks are what give new companies and new things life and hope.”
Aug 16, 2023
Aug 16, 2023
Aug 16, 2023 negative
Balfour: Marketing growth hires cannot fix failing viral product loops
“And those things are driven so much by virality that if you're not getting the viral loops working, well then hiring a different type of growth person, a marketing or some other thing, it doesn't fucking matter, right? Like you're dead in the water.”
Aug 16, 2023 neutral
Aug 16, 2023
Balfour: Kill non-core growth experiments to protect focus on core engine
“Honestly, with limited time, limited resources, like, you gotta kill it, right? Because what you're doing is you're stealing time and attention away from finding that core machine that does contribute. You're focused on the icing, not the cake, and you need to…”
Aug 16, 2023 negative
Balfour: Pushing virality at HubSpot was my biggest mistake
“My biggest mistake at HubSpot was a little bit of what we touched on before, which is that I was in love with, like, the virality and other things that we had going with the early product, but there was a disconnect with the core target market of the core busi…”
Aug 16, 2023 positive