The Exchanges

Q you mentioned Facebook there. I, I do, I have to unpack this incredible journey that you had with Facebook. When you look back on that time, I, I love that playing the Oculus Rift, ah, story, but when you look back on that time, what were some of the biggest takeaways for you from, from spending the time you did at Facebook in such a pivotal moment for the company?

A Yeah, it was an interesting time for the company. I was hired to grow the product in different ways. Some of the biggest lessons that I took away from that were, were things that I had already done, but It's something that I continue to keep inside the playbook. It's that not to look at growth or even product building as one specific thing to grow your product. You can look at it in terms of SEO or paid loops or viral, but it's also about M&A and building entirely new products. So for example, I had a variety of teams at, at Facebook, but the one that was the biggest win for us was building messenger kids and engaging an entirely new segment of the population and by building this kind of Uh, safe family messaging product. So it's, it's, it's about thinking growth, thinking about growth broadly, and really thinking about all the different ways of growing.

AI assessment note: “Some of the biggest lessons that I took away from that were”

Q Not at all. I want to start there. You've got a pretty fascinating background. So I want to start with how you made your way into the world of some of the most powerful growth talks with the likes of Facebook and most recently Shopify. And what was that entry into growth for you?

A So I originally started as an entrepreneur, kind of bouncing between product and growth for a really long time, which I think is pretty common for a lot of growth people. I originally started building my first product when I was 21. I built a travel blogging network called TravelPod that I sold to TripAdvisor. And when I did TravelPod, I really focused on building the best product in the world and not on growing it, which, you know, had its own issues later that I discovered. But what happened was during the acquisition process with TripAdvisor, the CEO of TripAdvisor, I remember he was asking these really deep technical questions like, what are your meta tags? What does the SEO configuration look like? How much traffic do you get from different sources like Google or Google Images? And I was really thinking, why is this Guy, the CEO of TripAdvisor asking so many technical questions about SEO and this is, you know, quite a while ago and back when SEO was a dark art and growth in general, but that's a moment where I realized how important growth was and really realized that building a great product is important, but if you don't have a strong growth loop for it, it doesn't matter because you can't scale the product. So from that, that was a pretty pivotal moment for me and one where I really started focusing on viral loops and SEO and paid search and Funnel optimization to grow …

AI assessment note: “that's a moment where I realized how important growth was”

Q Totally with you in terms of really digging deep on the why. In terms of the actual process, again, I have no idea. So I find this candidate, I have the first interview, They seem good. What next? Do I, do I do like a test with them? Do I integrate them into the team? Like, literally, what does that actual meeting by meeting process look like?

A Well, the first meeting, like I mentioned, I would start at the bottom of the LinkedIn page, walk into the top, look for signs of excellence, ask some tough questions, try to get a sense from that first meeting. Do they truly understand growth? What have they done that's exceptional? Usually within 20 minutes of that meeting, I'll know, am I, am I, how aggressively am I pitching this and trying to get, you know, as much signal as possible. If the call ends and I don't have Enough signals to suggest that they're really good. The call might just, that might just end right there. That might be the last call. Uh, a good meeting where I get a sense of like this person actually has some, some pretty good signs. The next step would be, I would go to my network and back channel, uh, back channels are, are, are pretty important to me. Uh, at this point, you should really know if you get, um, a couple back channels and you're getting a strong signal and you see signs of excellence and you've got a good sense of what they've done and that they actually understand the levers. That's, uh, that's pretty good at this point. You also should get a bit of a sense of whether you'd like working with them. If you still don't know, you can go off to ask them, do some, uh, to do a test. Uh, I have done this, not always because sometimes candidates won't want to do it. Um, and it really depends, you k…

AI assessment note: “The next step would be, I would go to my network and back channel”

Q of things here, because that's so much, and I don't want to lose, like, strings. First off, before we touch on Facebook, you mentioned the viral loops that were actually core to the early products being so successful. Just so we understand, I think viral loops is kind of thrown around as Talk two words a lot. What is a viral loop and what makes one work and be efficient?

A Yeah, I think of the viral loop is basically where you have users on your product that are doing some kind of behavior that's inviting other users to come and register on the product. That's at its simplest level. You can have the best is when the core product itself has a viral loop. For example, a photo sharing product. Uh, using a photo sharing product and not sharing it is not, uh, a very useful product. So the loop, the viral loop is baked into the product itself. You can have kind of secondary loops baked into it, but ultimately it's about users who are on your product, inviting other users to potential users to come and use your product and convert. So there's different ways of doing this. It can be, uh, challenging and difficult to get right, but when you do get it right, it can lead to some pretty exponential growth.

AI assessment note: “viral loop is basically where you have users on your product that are doing some kind of behavior”

Q Well, what are those questions? Cause my, my trouble here is like often people work in Facebook's growth team and Clearly it's a fantastic growth team, and it achieved a lot, but I don't know the difference in attribution between individual and team. What questions do you deliver to really tease out individual performance and quality of candidate?

A So for me, I try to get a sense of how deeply they understand the craft. Um, were they just executing a playbook they took off the shelf? Uh, if they're, if this person's from Facebook, they'll have a very specific set of knowledge because they're supported with a lot of scaffolding at Facebook. Um, so you really want to get a sense of how, how deep did you go and how well do you understand the craft? So one, one question I love to ask is I'll ask, tell me something I don't know about growth. And it actually doesn't matter if they tell me something that I, that I already know. What it does though, is it forces the person to dig into their, their knowledge and their experience and pull out the one thing they believe is the top of the stack in terms of this is something really clever or really, you know, I know this, I experimented this, I learned this. And it lets you kind of anchor their knowledge in terms of they come up with something really good. And even if you know it, it gives you a sense of, oh, wow, they, they actually know that that's, that's really good. Um, so that's my favorite question. So you're really trying to get a sense of, do they really understand why certain things work? And you can ask other questions like, um, I do like asking a question, then just following up with a long string of whys to see if they truly understand what's happening. Uh, and that'll gi…

AI assessment note: “one question I love to ask is I'll ask, tell me something I don't know”

Q Ok, so it's separate, um, I know that I actually really want to focus on this and have it as a priority for me as the founder. Do I hire a junior growth engineer and we start small and A-B testing, or do I go for a big stellar growth leader and build a team around them? How do you advise me there?

A Well, I generally like to hire as senior as possible. Um, you want to bring in somebody who's had a ton of experience. Growth takes a really long time to build intuition around. So you need to have done a lot of experiments, tried a lot of different things, and growth is a lot about pattern matching. So what, what have you seen work? What are you seeing in the data? And then how can you use your intuition to build other, um, other tactics that will move the needle? So I, I try to go as senior as possible. That's not always possible because one of the problems with growth Is that there's, there's, there's a limited pool of talent in the growth sector. Uh, so that, that is probably the constraint that a founder will run into first. So one other approach, if the ability to hire somebody very senior is not possible, then you can hire somebody who's a bit more junior. But in that case, I would surround them with a set of advisors.

AI assessment note: “I generally like to hire as senior as possible.”

Q that, like, past intuition has been detrimental to their performance, because they've relied on previous experiences, expecting them to create the same outcomes that they did before, and actually, it impacted their mindset In the wrong way moving forwards, because it was different products, different circumstances. How do you think about not letting past experiences negatively impact how you think about future growth projects? Because it could be totally different.

A Yeah. I think there's a few, few things you have to do. One, you have to constantly test your, your knowledge. It's one thing you know now may be different in a different context. And also I think it's important not just to I'm not, it goes back to really understanding what's going on. So if an experiment worked, that's just knowing that experiment worked is interesting, but may not be repeatable. The most important thing is understanding the why behind it. Why did it actually work? It goes back to some of my interview questions. Uh, it'd be, I don't know if easy is the right word, but it would be say easy for somebody to give me an answer that, uh, something they've done that's worked well. But it's a little bit harder to dig, you know, five whys deep to find out, well, why did, why did this work? And why do you think? And once you know the root knowledge behind it, that's more transportable than the actual, um, experiment, uh, result itself. So, uh, but I think it's, it's valid that you need to constantly retest these assumptions and retest these, uh, experiments, but, um, counter to that, once you understand that the, the deep knowledge of why something works a certain way or why a certain algorithm works another way, I mean, I've certainly, um, I've seen cases where you can apply that very quickly, uh, to, to, to produce wins. And, uh, it's usually a really good starting po…

AI assessment note: “once you know the root knowledge behind it, that's more transportable”

Q What would you say is the biggest mistake that founders make when hiring growth teams other than hiring the wrong people?

A Oh, I mean, not empowering them. Uh, growth teams need engineers. They, uh, I, I like, Using growth tactics that rely on engineering approaches rather than using a bunch of spreadsheets to come up with, uh, changes to make and doing analysis, but building algorithms and systems to scale growth solutions. And you really need engineers to do that. So I think it's really important to give growth leaders, the engineering capacity to execute quickly. Um, I also like to say you need your, your growth leader to be as close to the sun as possible. You don't want to bury it too deep in the org. That's a mistake I've, I've seen done, uh, before. Um, because if there's something really critical to the business, that is a, a decision, perhaps a controversial decision that needs to be made. Sometimes a very time sensitive decision that needs to be made. You don't want it to be six layers from the CEO. You want to have a, a short loop there. Um, so I think those are some mistakes that some founders can do.

AI assessment note: “Oh, I mean, not empowering them. Uh, growth teams need engineers.”

Q of things here, because that's so much, and I don't want to lose, like, strings. First off, before we touch on Facebook, you mentioned the viral loops that were actually core to the early products being so successful. Just so we understand, I think viral loops is kind of thrown around as Talk two words a lot. What is a viral loop and what makes one work and be efficient?

A Yeah, I think of the viral loop is basically where you have users on your product that are doing some kind of behavior that's inviting other users to come and register on the product. That's at its simplest level. You can have the best is when the core product itself has a viral loop. For example, a photo sharing product. Uh, using a photo sharing product and not sharing it is not, uh, a very useful product. So the loop, the viral loop is baked into the product itself. You can have kind of secondary loops baked into it, but ultimately it's about users who are on your product, inviting other users to potential users to come and use your product and convert. So there's different ways of doing this. It can be, uh, challenging and difficult to get right, but when you do get it right, it can lead to some pretty exponential growth.

AI assessment note: “viral loop is basically where you have users on your product that are doing some kind of behavior”

Q What are some big red flags in those first 60 to 90 days? If that's like the things that they could do well, for me as a founder of hiring my first growth leaders, what should I be nervous about or look out for?

A There are many. The, uh, the two that, uh, come to mind would be, first is speed I think is very important in growth. The cadence and velocity that you can experiment in and Uh, and, you know, push new code out and run things is very highly correlated with your ability to be successful. So if I'm not seeing the speed and progress within the first few months, I would be, or hearing a lot of excuses, I would be pretty nervous. That would be a red flag for me. And you've kind of hinted at this a few times earlier around product teams, working with growth teams, and how do you structure them and have them working together because of how cross-functional growth can be. If there's tension in the first few months between the, either the teams or the new growth leader and the product teams, that's, that's a red flag and that, that, that can go sideways pretty quick. So I'd look for early tension. How are the relationships working out? Um, is this new person coming in with a sense of humility, asking a lot of questions and, um, that can go sideways pretty quick. I would, You know, speed and velocity can be improved. A relationship falling apart can be completely dysfunctional and just cause the whole thing to fall apart.

AI assessment note: “if I'm not seeing the speed and progress within the first few months”

Q Ok, so it's separate, um, I know that I actually really want to focus on this and have it as a priority for me as the founder. Do I hire a junior growth engineer and we start small and A-B testing, or do I go for a big stellar growth leader and build a team around them? How do you advise me there?

A Well, I generally like to hire as senior as possible. Um, you want to bring in somebody who's had a ton of experience. Growth takes a really long time to build intuition around. So you need to have done a lot of experiments, tried a lot of different things, and growth is a lot about pattern matching. So what, what have you seen work? What are you seeing in the data? And then how can you use your intuition to build other, um, other tactics that will move the needle? So I, I try to go as senior as possible. That's not always possible because one of the problems with growth Is that there's, there's, there's a limited pool of talent in the growth sector. Uh, so that, that is probably the constraint that a founder will run into first. So one other approach, if the ability to hire somebody very senior is not possible, then you can hire somebody who's a bit more junior. But in that case, I would surround them with a set of advisors.

AI assessment note: “Well, I generally like to hire as senior as possible.”

Q Totally with you in terms of really digging deep on the why. In terms of the actual process, again, I have no idea. So I find this candidate, I have the first interview, They seem good. What next? Do I, do I do like a test with them? Do I integrate them into the team? Like, literally, what does that actual meeting by meeting process look like?

A Well, the first meeting, like I mentioned, I would start at the bottom of the LinkedIn page, walk into the top, look for signs of excellence, ask some tough questions, try to get a sense from that first meeting. Do they truly understand growth? What have they done that's exceptional? Usually within 20 minutes of that meeting, I'll know, am I, am I, how aggressively am I pitching this and trying to get, you know, as much signal as possible. If the call ends and I don't have Enough signals to suggest that they're really good. The call might just, that might just end right there. That might be the last call. Uh, a good meeting where I get a sense of like this person actually has some, some pretty good signs. The next step would be, I would go to my network and back channel, uh, back channels are, are, are pretty important to me. Uh, at this point, you should really know if you get, um, a couple back channels and you're getting a strong signal and you see signs of excellence and you've got a good sense of what they've done and that they actually understand the levers. That's, uh, that's pretty good at this point. You also should get a bit of a sense of whether you'd like working with them. If you still don't know, you can go off to ask them, do some, uh, to do a test. Uh, I have done this, not always because sometimes candidates won't want to do it. Um, and it really depends, you k…

AI assessment note: “The next step would be, I would go to my network and back channel”

Q that, like, past intuition has been detrimental to their performance, because they've relied on previous experiences, expecting them to create the same outcomes that they did before, and actually, it impacted their mindset In the wrong way moving forwards, because it was different products, different circumstances. How do you think about not letting past experiences negatively impact how you think about future growth projects? Because it could be totally different.

A Yeah. I think there's a few, few things you have to do. One, you have to constantly test your, your knowledge. It's one thing you know now may be different in a different context. And also I think it's important not just to I'm not, it goes back to really understanding what's going on. So if an experiment worked, that's just knowing that experiment worked is interesting, but may not be repeatable. The most important thing is understanding the why behind it. Why did it actually work? It goes back to some of my interview questions. Uh, it'd be, I don't know if easy is the right word, but it would be say easy for somebody to give me an answer that, uh, something they've done that's worked well. But it's a little bit harder to dig, you know, five whys deep to find out, well, why did, why did this work? And why do you think? And once you know the root knowledge behind it, that's more transportable than the actual, um, experiment, uh, result itself. So, uh, but I think it's, it's valid that you need to constantly retest these assumptions and retest these, uh, experiments, but, um, counter to that, once you understand that the, the deep knowledge of why something works a certain way or why a certain algorithm works another way, I mean, I've certainly, um, I've seen cases where you can apply that very quickly, uh, to, to, to produce wins. And, uh, it's usually a really good starting po…

AI assessment note: “once you know the root knowledge behind it, that's more transportable”

Q Okay, so what tactics have not changed over the last five years in growth?

A Um, there's, there's a lot that haven't changed. They've, they've, they've changed a little bit, but they're still, they're still valuable. So one is certainly SEO is still, it's changed a lot, but it's still a very, uh, big fire hose of traffic and conversion that you can get. So SEO is, is a, is a, is a good one. I think like the tried and true funnel optimization work or just product optimization of, um, making a product easier to use, getting users to a delightful moment in the product as fast as possible, those principles haven't changed. And that's something that You know, even though some of the channels have changed doing work to optimize onboarding or exit flows, that, that, that type of work is still very, uh, very valuable. Um, And then, you know, paid channels in general have become more important because a lot of these services, a lot of these engines like Google are moving away from showing organic results and showing paid. So paid, certainly paid search, for example, works very well. And, um, uh, it's still a very large channel that has to be part of anybody's strategy.

AI assessment note: “one is certainly SEO... tried and true funnel optimization work”

Q What would you say is the biggest mistake that founders make when hiring growth teams other than hiring the wrong people?

A Oh, I mean, not empowering them. Uh, growth teams need engineers. They, uh, I, I like, Using growth tactics that rely on engineering approaches rather than using a bunch of spreadsheets to come up with, uh, changes to make and doing analysis, but building algorithms and systems to scale growth solutions. And you really need engineers to do that. So I think it's really important to give growth leaders, the engineering capacity to execute quickly. Um, I also like to say you need your, your growth leader to be as close to the sun as possible. You don't want to bury it too deep in the org. That's a mistake I've, I've seen done, uh, before. Um, because if there's something really critical to the business, that is a, a decision, perhaps a controversial decision that needs to be made. Sometimes a very time sensitive decision that needs to be made. You don't want it to be six layers from the CEO. You want to have a, a short loop there. Um, so I think those are some mistakes that some founders can do.

AI assessment note: “Oh, I mean, not empowering them. Uh, growth teams need engineers.”

Q Tell me what, what one piece of advice would you give a growth leader today entering a new role?

A I'm really big on focus. I think focus is the number one lever that you can use at any point and have immediate impact by stopping the work on things that don't matter and starting to work on, on, on different work or work that, that does matter, that will move the needle. So I would advise a growth leader very quickly, find out what your North stars, find out what is that one thing that will be impactful for the business. Get everything on your team rallied around that North star and then stop doing all the things that don't matter. That is the, to me, that is the most important thing because it will increase the likelihood of having the right kind of impact very quickly. And it's growth is something that can touch and move every lever and every metric in the company. So there's always this demand for, Hey, can it grow this part of the business or this part of the business and deciding which area that will be focused on and that the teams will, will focus their energy around, uh, is extremely important, harder than it sounds. And I think, uh, you know, an important part of leading growth is probably saying no, you know, once a week or at least once a month to something that doesn't align with that North star. So it's very quickly determine the North star, rally the team around it and start showing wins as fast as possible.

AI assessment note: “I would advise a growth leader very quickly, find out what your North stars”

Q Luke, I am your CEO. You are my head of growth. What does a good relationship between us look like? How often should we meet? What can I do to be the best CEO for you?

A So I've seen this work in a variety of different ways. There's different types of CEOs with different DNA. Um, I, I think you want the, the distance between the CEO and the head of growth to be quite short. Uh, if I were designing from first principles, I would say the head of growth reports to the CEO meets weekly and is flagging issues and also discussing potential, you know, strategy changes and approaches at a very high level. That said, I've also seen it work where head of growth reports to the COO or the president or, um, or another executive CRO potentially. So it can work in, in different ways, but in either of those scenarios with the, the CEO and the head of growth need a very tight relationship and ideally be meeting weekly if possible.

AI assessment note: “head of growth reports to the CEO meets weekly and is flagging issues”

Q So how do we think about attacking that in terms of the growth teams? Cause the other big question I find is like, do you integrate growth teams into product teams, into marketing teams, or do you have standalone growth teams like you had at Facebook? How do you think about advising founders when it comes to standalone versus integrated?

A Personally, I find that it works best when it's standalone. It really comes down to Who you're able to hire to bring on the team and the skill sets that that person, because that's the constraint. The, the constraint is going to be that who can you find to lead the team who's epic and what are their strengths and how can you build around that person? That's, that's generally how I'd start, but I do find it works better when the growth org is standalone and that you put as many functions as possible within that, that growth org. The, um, the bottom line is they're going to have to work either way with the product team. And, uh, it's just a really important relationship between the product team and the growth org, but Growth has its own culture that it needs to, uh, it needs to build, and it, it does operate a little differently than a traditional product or, so I prefer to have it separately. It can work in many different ways. There is really no cookie cutter. This is how growth works. This is how product works. It depends on a lot of different variables, but I've seen it work best when it's separate.

AI assessment note: “Personally, I find that it works best when it's standalone.”

Q What are some big red flags in those first 60 to 90 days? If that's like the things that they could do well, for me as a founder of hiring my first growth leaders, what should I be nervous about or look out for?

A There are many. The, uh, the two that, uh, come to mind would be, first is speed I think is very important in growth. The cadence and velocity that you can experiment in and Uh, and, you know, push new code out and run things is very highly correlated with your ability to be successful. So if I'm not seeing the speed and progress within the first few months, I would be, or hearing a lot of excuses, I would be pretty nervous. That would be a red flag for me. And you've kind of hinted at this a few times earlier around product teams, working with growth teams, and how do you structure them and have them working together because of how cross-functional growth can be. If there's tension in the first few months between the, either the teams or the new growth leader and the product teams, that's, that's a red flag and that, that, that can go sideways pretty quick. So I'd look for early tension. How are the relationships working out? Um, is this new person coming in with a sense of humility, asking a lot of questions and, um, that can go sideways pretty quick. I would, You know, speed and velocity can be improved. A relationship falling apart can be completely dysfunctional and just cause the whole thing to fall apart.

AI assessment note: “The two that come to mind would be, first is speed”

Q Sorry, final, final one. What can a founder do to attract the best advisors? What can, how do they pitch it? How do they, what makes you say yes versus no?

A It's a good question. Um, different people are looking for different things. Um, what I look for is, because it depends on the, on the advisor, I suppose. Um, so, but most advisors and ideally you want to hire an advisor who you're, you're aligning incentives. So you bring in an advisor and you compensate them with equity. That's the ideal. I know not all advisors would do that, but that's, that's the ideal because then the advisor is, is incentivized in the same way as the founder. Um, so if you're able to find, uh, advisors that would take on, uh, exclusively equity or the majority in equity, then really you want to convince them of the, the, In the same way you would convince an investor, that's probably the right mental way to mental mindset to take here, uh, is to think about how would you pitch the company to an investor because an advisor who's coming in and taking equity is basically investing their time. That's how I think about it when I join a company is what's the path forward? What are the growth loops? Do I believe that these growth loops will lead to the scale that we're trying to build? Um, what, what are the, you know, valuation multiples? Where can this go? What are the comparables? Uh, one thing that I've always found helpful is for a founder to introduce me to their VCs because the VCs invested their time and I'm investing my time, sorry, their, their time a…

AI assessment note: “think about how would you pitch the company to an investor”

Q Luke, I am your CEO. You are my head of growth. What does a good relationship between us look like? How often should we meet? What can I do to be the best CEO for you?

A So I've seen this work in a variety of different ways. There's different types of CEOs with different DNA. Um, I, I think you want the, the distance between the CEO and the head of growth to be quite short. Uh, if I were designing from first principles, I would say the head of growth reports to the CEO meets weekly and is flagging issues and also discussing potential, you know, strategy changes and approaches at a very high level. That said, I've also seen it work where head of growth reports to the COO or the president or, um, or another executive CRO potentially. So it can work in, in different ways, but in either of those scenarios with the, the CEO and the head of growth need a very tight relationship and ideally be meeting weekly if possible.

AI assessment note: “tight relationship and ideally be meeting weekly if possible.”

Q Why did it work in some companies and not in others?

A I think in some companies, it depends on the way the company is structured, how teams work together, how cross-functional the, the, the products that are being built are, like how integrated into the, the rest of the product it is. Yeah. I've seen it, it worked both ways. So in, if you can carve out surface areas, and I think this is, this is important. I think ideally you want the growth team to own all of the services. That matter the most to growth. Uh, that's, that's the ideal state. Senior leader, multi, uh, disciplined. They know how to do engineering. They know how to do growth. They know how to do product, and they have ideally all these functions, these, these surfaces, um, as part of the, the growth team. They don't need to sit inside of another product team's reviews because they, for that specific, for any work happening at that surface, because they own the surface. Where that's possible, where you can actually carve it out, that's very important and allows the teams to run independently very quickly. So there's less of a sitting on, on different teams product reviews in that case. Where the surfaces are owned by, all owned by a product team, then yes, the growth team should be very embedded and reviewing all the work that's being done.

AI assessment note: “it depends on the way the company is structured, how teams work together”

Q Tell me what tactics have died a death over the last five years?

A Over the last five years. So I think SEO is an area that I've spent a lot of time in, and one that comes to mind is, and you can put it under a wrapper of black hat SEO if you want, but basically SEO that used to work, um, but was essentially against the Google guidelines. That is, it, it's not, it's not worth taking that risk anymore. It, it doesn't really work anymore. The algorithms have gotten so good that in many cases it doesn't work. I know it's still possible, but it's just not worth it because, uh, you can get penalized and your entire business can, um, uh, can be out the window. Frankly, you can entirely ruin an entire domain because of that. So I would highly recommend founders to stay away from that. That's something that I don't know that is broadly known by all founders, but it's a question you should definitely ask anybody doing SEO on your teams. Any of your growth leaders that, uh, is no longer valid and can, um, can destroy businesses. It has destroyed businesses.

AI assessment note: “SEO that used to work, um, but was essentially against the Google guidelines.”

Q Totally with you there. Can I ask, when you think about also the advising that you said there, you mentioned some of the companies you've worked with, from your Patreons to your Quora's to your Twitters. When you think about commonalities between what made them so good, are there commonalities that stand out to you when you reflect back on those experiences advising them?

A Yeah, I mean, there's, there's a few things that come to mind. The probably main commonality would be around The we're advising a company where there's a lot of success with the product and where there's a good engagement is that when the growth teams of cells are very curious and very humble and open to being wrong, which is not the case for all growth teams, but certainly when you have an advisor, a relationship with the company is very important. And some companies have done extremely well with this and, and advising is a, actually growth is an interesting thing where it may take 15 years to learn something and, you know, 10 different experiments, but you can communicate it very quickly. So it's, it's a, it's a unique relationship with a company and the ones that I've seen work the best, the commonality would be, uh, teams that are just constantly questioning assumptions, open to being wrong, very curious, and that's, that's something that I've seen work really well.

AI assessment note: “when the growth teams of cells are very curious and very humble and open”

Q Luke, what would you most like to change about the world of growth today?

A I think one of the biggest challenges with growth is there's not, there's a small talent pool in growth. There's not a ton of people doing it, and there's a variety of reasons for this. Uh, the schools aren't really teaching it, uh, at scale yet. Um, also to learn growth, the most valuable thing Is that, and this is, this is probably a good signal for founders to look for. The best way to learn growth is to have a lot of reps, to have taken a lot of shots on goal, because that's the best thing you can do to inform your playbook, to inform your knowledge, to inform your intuition. And there's not a ton of companies out there. There, there aren't an infinite amount of companies that have that scale where people that are practicing growth can learn that high end growth and really become experts. So what you end up with is a small number of people who have that experience and who know what works and what, who actually know what works and what doesn't work because there's just, um, only so many companies where they can, they can build that experience at. So what I would like to change is. To grow the talent pool and have, um, uh, just more people in the industry who are, who are good and who are sharing the knowledge.

AI assessment note: “So what I would like to change is. To grow the talent pool”

Q Totally with you there. Can I ask, when you think about also the advising that you said there, you mentioned some of the companies you've worked with, from your Patreons to your Quora's to your Twitters. When you think about commonalities between what made them so good, are there commonalities that stand out to you when you reflect back on those experiences advising them?

A Yeah, I mean, there's, there's a few things that come to mind. The probably main commonality would be around The we're advising a company where there's a lot of success with the product and where there's a good engagement is that when the growth teams of cells are very curious and very humble and open to being wrong, which is not the case for all growth teams, but certainly when you have an advisor, a relationship with the company is very important. And some companies have done extremely well with this and, and advising is a, actually growth is an interesting thing where it may take 15 years to learn something and, you know, 10 different experiments, but you can communicate it very quickly. So it's, it's a, it's a unique relationship with a company and the ones that I've seen work the best, the commonality would be, uh, teams that are just constantly questioning assumptions, open to being wrong, very curious, and that's, that's something that I've seen work really well.

AI assessment note: “when the growth teams of cells are very curious and very humble and open to being wrong”

Q Okay, so we have a project and it hasn't gone that well. How do you, as a growth leader, prevent morale deterioration across the team when a project doesn't go to plan and it doesn't work?

A Well, one, one project not working doesn't generally tank morale, but it's when there's like a series of them. So there's a few things that are, that are important. And I've seen this in a variety of different areas, especially with new products that are looking for that growth lever. Um, Because you can go through a period of just iteration and learning. So there's a few ways to do this. I think one is you do need a culture of grit. You need to have strong leaders that can keep the team together through those, those phases. I think it's important to celebrate all of the wins, even the smallest of wins, and to really focus on the learnings, even though It might take a while to unlock certain levers and you have to have that grit to get through it through a series of failures, but reframing, it's not so much a failure, but if something didn't work and you've learned from it, that is also success. And you have to talk about it that way, recognize it that way and build a culture that, that celebrates that. So I think there's, um, there's some strong leadership required through those phases. Uh, but I do think it's important not to frame failed experiments as failure, as long as you're learning and it leads To an unlock that's even bigger, and that happens quite often.

AI assessment note: “important to celebrate all of the wins, even the smallest of wins, and to really focus on the learnings”

Q Okay, so we have a project and it hasn't gone that well. How do you, as a growth leader, prevent morale deterioration across the team when a project doesn't go to plan and it doesn't work?

A Well, one, one project not working doesn't generally tank morale, but it's when there's like a series of them. So there's a few things that are, that are important. And I've seen this in a variety of different areas, especially with new products that are looking for that growth lever. Um, Because you can go through a period of just iteration and learning. So there's a few ways to do this. I think one is you do need a culture of grit. You need to have strong leaders that can keep the team together through those, those phases. I think it's important to celebrate all of the wins, even the smallest of wins, and to really focus on the learnings, even though It might take a while to unlock certain levers and you have to have that grit to get through it through a series of failures, but reframing, it's not so much a failure, but if something didn't work and you've learned from it, that is also success. And you have to talk about it that way, recognize it that way and build a culture that, that celebrates that. So I think there's, um, there's some strong leadership required through those phases. Uh, but I do think it's important not to frame failed experiments as failure, as long as you're learning and it leads To an unlock that's even bigger, and that happens quite often.

AI assessment note: “celebrate all of the wins, even the smallest of wins, and to really focus on the learnings”

Q I totally agree with you in terms of expanding the talent pool. I want to finish with actually one of my favorites, which is like, well, what one company growth strategy other than Shopify, uh, have you been most impressed by recently and specifically why?

A The, uh, one company that I'm, I'm an investor in, uh, it's called bounce and I was really impressed with their growth strategy. One of the reasons I invested was because they've been very good at their growth loop and it's everyone in the company from the founder, uh, to everyone else very much understands it. And, you know, I've been an advisor for, for a long time. The one thing that it goes back to a lot of things we've talked about today, That was very impressed with this company is their, the way they leverage advisors and have surrounded themselves with people that can help them learn and how they've been just incorporating that knowledge and iterating on their, their growth loops through, uh, through what they're, they're hearing. So I think that's, that's. Something I've been very impressed with with this company. It's growing really fast and it has to do, I think, with how they've really put that growth lever and their growth channels throughout the bloodstream of the entire company, everybody in the, in the company and how they've leveraged advisors. I really, I actually do think more people, more founders should leverage advisors. It's probably the fastest way to get, uh, wins and get knowledge. Um, especially in this limited talent pool that's out there.

AI assessment note: “one company that I'm, I'm an investor in, uh, it's called bounce”

Q Why did it work in some companies and not in others?

A I think in some companies, it depends on the way the company is structured, how teams work together, how cross-functional the, the, the products that are being built are, like how integrated into the, the rest of the product it is. Yeah. I've seen it, it worked both ways. So in, if you can carve out surface areas, and I think this is, this is important. I think ideally you want the growth team to own all of the services. That matter the most to growth. Uh, that's, that's the ideal state. Senior leader, multi, uh, disciplined. They know how to do engineering. They know how to do growth. They know how to do product, and they have ideally all these functions, these, these surfaces, um, as part of the, the growth team. They don't need to sit inside of another product team's reviews because they, for that specific, for any work happening at that surface, because they own the surface. Where that's possible, where you can actually carve it out, that's very important and allows the teams to run independently very quickly. So there's less of a sitting on, on different teams product reviews in that case. Where the surfaces are owned by, all owned by a product team, then yes, the growth team should be very embedded and reviewing all the work that's being done.

AI assessment note: “it depends on the way the company is structured, how teams work together”