The Exchanges

Q There's so many questions that I want to dig in straight on, but I want to set the foundations of, like, what growth is and what it isn't, because it is so widely and bastardized as a term. Like, what is growth to you and what is it not?

A The simple definition I use for growth is you've got some value that you deliver, you help customers do something they're trying to do, they're struggling. And growth is the ability to find customers and help them understand the value that you're going to deliver to them and get them to use and love your product or service. And the way that's sort of different from traditional job functions like marketing or product or sales is kind of different in three ways. First of all, most of the time with growth, there's no playbook. So, you know, if you're marketing dish soap at Unilever and you hire someone from Procter & Gamble, like they're going to walk in, they're going to know 90% of the job. But you're creating a product that no one's ever sold before. Maybe even a new category. So there isn't a playbook to do that. And that brings me to the second thing, which is that you're trying to sell a product that nobody's looking for. And again, maybe a category no one's even looking for. So you've got to figure out who is this customer? What is it they're struggling to do? What do they think they're looking for? Where are they looking for it? And so you can turn up there and look like that thing and answer those questions that they're gonna have. And the third piece that's really different is it cuts across disciplines. You know, if you're in finance or sales, you can mostly just, like,…

AI assessment note: “The simple definition I use for growth is you've got some value that you deliver”

Q I get you. Ok, so there's times in the beginning when we're kind of figuring it out. And then when we set it, is there a time post setting it where it's like, ah, it might be time to change that?

A First of all, yeah, if you learn something about your customers and it's actually wrong, we think, you know, accounting software, we think that they were signing in to, like, log expenses, but in fact it's mostly about filing quarterly VAT returns, and people who log expenses don't retain, but people who file quarterly VAT returns do retain. So that tells you, okay, we're looking at VAT returns filed as our North Star. Um, and that's a much lower frequency. That's a quarterly rather than a weekly active user cadence. The other one is if you just spawn a second business line that's different. Like Amazon's North Star from 1996 was repeat purchases. Obviously AWS has a different North Star, right? It's gonna be something around server usage or cycles or something.

AI assessment note: “First of all, yeah, if you learn something about your customers and it's actually wrong”

Q Just picking up on that, you said about travel sites where the flow is maybe, uh, suboptimal for the user experience, but it's like optimized for the conversion funnel for the AOV. Does user experience not correlate to the highest AOV and the best conversion funnel? Like, do you see what I mean? Can they be at odds?

A Yeah, I think that's, That's a really important misconception, actually. It's, it's a huge false dichotomy there. So a lot of times you'll get the best customers in situations where you're actually introducing friction into the funnel. So one example of that is, I don't know if you've ever, probably not, tried to sign up for Noom or Calm, and they have these onboarding flows where they're like, what brings you here today, and what are you trying to achieve, and what have been your problems in the past, and how much do you weigh, and what's your target weight, and they'll be 20 or 30 questions long. And these, these long flows are actually really good at building intent, and the AB doesn't optimize this shit out of these flows, and it is more of an onerous user experience.

AI assessment note: “you'll get the best customers in situations where you're actually introducing friction into the funnel”

Q Final one before we do a quick fire, which is like, what's a growth loop to you? Everyone always says on the show about growth loops, and everyone has very different definitions. We talked about kind of that, Kind of channel leading to core base and what, what is a growth loop and how do you think about how startups should think about it?

A I mean, fundamentally, it's, it's any positive feedback loop anywhere in your business. It basically means if you, like, go to sleep and stop doing it, it keeps running itself. So that could be a classic thing like a referral loop. Um, it could be a financial loop. You know, if your ads are paying back five X in 30 days, then you have a positive ad spend growth loop. You know, there's these network effect loops where you bring people on your show, they create content, that brings you more listeners, you know, which then increases the desirability of your show, which brings you better guests, you know, virtuous circles, so. Anywhere. Once you've mapped your growth model, you look around and say, where can we find a positive feedback loop here?

AI assessment note: “fundamentally, it's, it's any positive feedback loop anywhere in your business.”

Q the best hires, not necessarily coming from that background. So we put that out, put it on Indeed, put it on, you know, whatever we want to do, and we have this top of funnel. We start the interview process. Interview one, what am I trying to achieve from that first interview, Matt? I've never done this hiring process before. What questions do I ask? How do I do it?

A So remember, I said you want someone who can do 50% of the hard things you need to do and figure out the other 90%. So my entire interview process is going to be focused around figuring that out. So I've got my little list of, like, It's five hard things, and I'm going to start like a funnel. I create rapport. I start with really broad questions. What are you great at? You know, what, what's your favorite work to do? What would you rather delegate? By their answers to that, I can already start to tick off things on my list where I'm like, okay, it's obvious they can do this. I'm not worried about their ability to do that. I'll end up with one, two, three things where I'm not sure they've got it or not, and then I'll go deeper into questions about that, and those are going to be questions typically That don't have a clear right or wrong answer, but are important. So, um, marketing attribution. You know, how do you think about, you know, first click versus last click, and how to learn and spend your money wisely. Or, you know, talk me through how you think about, how you break apart a retention problem, or whatever the, how do you get resources from a department where you don't have any official authority over them. Whatever that thing I think they're gonna need. Um, I usually use question pairs, and talk me through it, and tell me about a time when, Um, who does this well, in yo…

AI assessment note: “I start with really broad questions. What are you great at?”

Q I get you. Ok, so there's times in the beginning when we're kind of figuring it out. And then when we set it, is there a time post setting it where it's like, ah, it might be time to change that?

A First of all, yeah, if you learn something about your customers and it's actually wrong, we think, you know, accounting software, we think that they were signing in to, like, log expenses, but in fact it's mostly about filing quarterly VAT returns, and people who log expenses don't retain, but people who file quarterly VAT returns do retain. So that tells you, okay, we're looking at VAT returns filed as our North Star. Um, and that's a much lower frequency. That's a quarterly rather than a weekly active user cadence. The other one is if you just spawn a second business line that's different. Like Amazon's North Star from 1996 was repeat purchases. Obviously AWS has a different North Star, right? It's gonna be something around server usage or cycles or something.

AI assessment note: “First of all, yeah, if you learn something about your customers and it's actually wrong”

Q Are there any quick and easy wins that people can do joining teams in the growth role? Uh, and should they be going for those quick wins?

A So there are every good growth person with some experience has a bag of quick wins that'll work. You know, changing a bad headline to a good now you can headline. Going back through, you know, most people track Signups and conversions for their paid stuff, but they don't look at customer value. And you may find that certain channels bring you higher or lower value customers, and you can just shift spend to the ones that bring you high value customers. Things like, if you haven't been emailing your database and you've got a good email sequence, you can wake up a bunch of dormant leads really quickly. So they're all like, and there's a dozens of these quick wins, and you can do them, and especially if you need money, or if you have one of those founders who's impatient for traction, fine. But if you think about any of those things I just said, They're kind of one and done. You know, once your headline's good, you're not gonna, you know, if your conversion goes from one percent to 10%, you're not gonna 10 x that number again.

AI assessment note: “every good growth person with some experience has a bag of quick wins”

Q Final one before we do a quick fire, which is like, what's a growth loop to you? Everyone always says on the show about growth loops, and everyone has very different definitions. We talked about kind of that, Kind of channel leading to core base and what, what is a growth loop and how do you think about how startups should think about it?

A I mean, fundamentally, it's, it's any positive feedback loop anywhere in your business. It basically means if you, like, go to sleep and stop doing it, it keeps running itself. So that could be a classic thing like a referral loop. Um, it could be a financial loop. You know, if your ads are paying back five X in 30 days, then you have a positive ad spend growth loop. You know, there's these network effect loops where you bring people on your show, they create content, that brings you more listeners, you know, which then increases the desirability of your show, which brings you better guests, you know, virtuous circles, so. Anywhere. Once you've mapped your growth model, you look around and say, where can we find a positive feedback loop here?

AI assessment note: “fundamentally, it's, it's any positive feedback loop anywhere in your business.”

Q Absolutely, so everyone, it's in the show notes, and I have to say, I've seen it already, and it is absolutely fantastic. We've already adopted, I think, about six of the 10 in a day, so, uh, so hopefully you should see a lot more of us if we're growing, uh, as well as we should be. Um, and then what's your favorite book, and why?

A So I'm just finishing a book now called Do You Talk Funny by David Nyhill. Uh, he's an Irishman living in the U.S. He's a stand-up comedian, and this is more of a guide for public speakers, but it teaches basically the, the kind of tricks of stand-up comedy or how to make things funny to help you make regular public speaking more amusing and engaging. And then, um, going back a bit further, a really good book by a British guy named Marcus Buckingham called The One Thing You Need to Know. Where he actually really just lays out, you know, what is the essence of leadership? What is the essence of great people management? And if you distill it to its core, what is the essence of great individual achievement? And there's so much wisdom packed into the one thing you need to know by Marcus Buckingham.

AI assessment note: “So I'm just finishing a book now called Do You Talk Funny”

Q And what was attractive then to you about kind of joining the VC world from the digital marketing perspective?

A You know, I first, my first taste was I was mentoring for a couple of years with 500 startups. So in the evening, cause they're in California time, most of these companies, I'd get on these Skype calls with people and they'd explain their business. And over the course of 45 minutes, we'd brainstorm a bunch of stuff they could test. And that was fun. And they get super excited. And then, you know, they emailed me two days later and they'd say, okay, I tested these things and this stuff happened and what should I do next? And I just love that quick cycle time to results. And the fact that each business is a totally new and ingenious and different challenge. So the constant novelty of it, and I was just really enjoying it. And so that's when, you know, when Dave said, Hey, like you could actually get paid and do this full time. I was like, wow, yes, that would be amazing. So I love the fast cycle times, brilliant, impressive founders. And just constantly seeing new and different business models.

AI assessment note: “I just love that quick cycle time to results”

Q Incredibly challenging. Uh, so now you've had 11 years, you've also seen so many preventable mistakes from the side of the investor. When you sit here today, what do you know now that you wish you'd known when you entered the world of growth?

A I think the biggest thing Is how much of growth is actually figuring stuff out? Is actually information discovery rather than running playbooks, doing best practices, copying what other companies did? You know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out you can do SEO, you can do ads, you can optimize your funnel, but figuring out the details of, you know, Google has a 100,000 search results for any query. You know, how are you going to be in one of the top three? Results, which are the only ones anyone's going to click on when you've got companies with way more money than you and 10 years of Head Start who are locked into those top three positions. Ads are sold at auction, right? So, which means you've got to be able to outbid companies, and right now the ones who are winning those auctions have the best unit economics, the smoothest funnels, the most creative testing behind them. So, so much of growth is just trying to figure stuff out as quickly as possible.

AI assessment note: “I think the biggest thing Is how much of growth is actually figuring stuff out”

Q And what do they get from that? They get a higher quality lead that's, like, got sunk cost fallacy because they've put enough time in to get through 30 questions? What is the, why, why do they do that?

A So sunk cost is part of it, like, you're not gonna, you know, not want to see your results when you get to the end of answering 30 questions. But a big piece of it is actually, and this I think is brilliant, is they're sort of taking people through the mental purchase journey. So if you're selling expensive software, you can afford salespeople, and they're going to answer your questions, and explain, and demo, and blah, blah, blah. But if your product costs 10 bucks, 30 bucks a month, you can. So your users are coming in and wondering, how is this thing going to help me? Why are my friends recommending it? Does it work in my specific case? What about this? What about that? And each of these questions doesn't just get some information from the customer and help qualify them, which is useful, but it builds intent. Because if, you know, if you go to the doctor and you say, well, it hurts here, and then the doctor says, well, does it hurt when you do this? And does it hurt more at night? And if you're like, yes, yes, yes, then you believe whatever the doctor says is more likely to be accurate. So they're actually showing that, yes, we understand you, and that builds intent.

AI assessment note: “they're sort of taking people through the mental purchase journey.”

Q If we just unpack a couple of elements there, 11 years at PayPal is a Hugely, uh, impactful, uh, segment of your career. What are one or two of your biggest lessons from that 11 years?

A So many of them. I think, you know, towards the end it got to the point when you're in a big company where having the right answers like five or 10% of the problem and getting the entire organization and to change people's mindset and align resources ends up becoming like 80 or 90% of the problem. I'm sure I've messed up the math there, but something like that. And so I'm very much more shifting my time and my hiring strategy and everything more Around influence. So that was a big piece of it. The other big one is when I look back on my time at PayPal, 90% of our growth came from, like, 10% of the stuff that we did. And by that, I mean, like, I could go back and say, you know, there are five or six things, obviously, before my time getting on eBay, uh, referral bonuses and, you know, network effects growth, getting early, getting engaged with web developers who were building the sites and implementing the payment systems, getting pre-integrated with shopping carts and hosts, some outbound sales. Like, that drove almost all their growth, but they did still, like, a ton of other stuff. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing campaigns, building products that, frankly, nobody ever used, and you can do that when you're generating hundreds of millions per year in free cash flow, but startups don't have that luxury, but then, you know, when I step back, and as a VC, a…

AI assessment note: “having the right answers like five or 10% of the problem and getting the entire organization”

Q Just picking up on that, you said about travel sites where the flow is maybe, uh, suboptimal for the user experience, but it's like optimized for the conversion funnel for the AOV. Does user experience not correlate to the highest AOV and the best conversion funnel? Like, do you see what I mean? Can they be at odds?

A Yeah, I think that's, That's a really important misconception, actually. It's, it's a huge false dichotomy there. So a lot of times you'll get the best customers in situations where you're actually introducing friction into the funnel. So one example of that is, I don't know if you've ever, probably not, tried to sign up for Noom or Calm, and they have these onboarding flows where they're like, what brings you here today, and what are you trying to achieve, and what have been your problems in the past, and how much do you weigh, and what's your target weight, and they'll be 20 or 30 questions long. And these, these long flows are actually really good at building intent, and the AB doesn't optimize this shit out of these flows, and it is more of an onerous user experience.

AI assessment note: “you'll get the best customers in situations where you're actually introducing friction into the funnel”

Q And what do they get from that? They get a higher quality lead that's, like, got sunk cost fallacy because they've put enough time in to get through 30 questions? What is the, why, why do they do that?

A So sunk cost is part of it, like, you're not gonna, you know, not want to see your results when you get to the end of answering 30 questions. But a big piece of it is actually, and this I think is brilliant, is they're sort of taking people through the mental purchase journey. So if you're selling expensive software, you can afford salespeople, and they're going to answer your questions, and explain, and demo, and blah, blah, blah. But if your product costs 10 bucks, 30 bucks a month, you can. So your users are coming in and wondering, how is this thing going to help me? Why are my friends recommending it? Does it work in my specific case? What about this? What about that? And each of these questions doesn't just get some information from the customer and help qualify them, which is useful, but it builds intent. Because if, you know, if you go to the doctor and you say, well, it hurts here, and then the doctor says, well, does it hurt when you do this? And does it hurt more at night? And if you're like, yes, yes, yes, then you believe whatever the doctor says is more likely to be accurate. So they're actually showing that, yes, we understand you, and that builds intent.

AI assessment note: “sunk cost is part of it... But a big piece of it is actually”

Q finding that person, I think the hard thing is they do have different, um, needs, and different things resonate. What are some lessons on what works in terms of the messaging that you use? Because For one person on Athletic Greens, it might be recovery, and for other it might be optimal brain function or whatever that is. How do you think about effective messaging in a more horizontal product?

A So for a very horizontal product like Airtable, I mean, it's really hard, but you're going to find initial use cases and you're going to kind of start there and expand. But if you came to me with your startup and said, we have this product, we need to find our customers. I start by kind of using survivorship bias. On our side, so I'd say, let's find some people who actually did sign up for your product, and assume that whatever they think you do for them, that's the thing your customers want. And then I go and start to interview those people. And we use a jobs to be done interview technique, which kind of gets to the core of like, what was their problem, and what were they trying to achieve? And what they're trying to achieve, I, I say like a good headline on a landing page completes the sentence, now you can. So I'm trying to do this, and oh, now you can, you know, close out your quarter in minutes, not, Days. Or whatever it is that they're trying to do. So then I'm going to do those interviews. I'm going to find out the different Now You Can's, the different outcomes that people have. And then, you know, if I've got 10 or 50 customer interview transcripts, now, like, what I used to do is just read through them, and I'm looking for the verbs. Uh, now you can use a large language model to do that, and it's like, pull out all the verbs, all the outcomes of what people are trying…

AI assessment note: “a good headline on a landing page completes the sentence, now you can.”

Q the best hires, not necessarily coming from that background. So we put that out, put it on Indeed, put it on, you know, whatever we want to do, and we have this top of funnel. We start the interview process. Interview one, what am I trying to achieve from that first interview, Matt? I've never done this hiring process before. What questions do I ask? How do I do it?

A So remember, I said you want someone who can do 50% of the hard things you need to do and figure out the other 90%. So my entire interview process is going to be focused around figuring that out. So I've got my little list of, like, It's five hard things, and I'm going to start like a funnel. I create rapport. I start with really broad questions. What are you great at? You know, what, what's your favorite work to do? What would you rather delegate? By their answers to that, I can already start to tick off things on my list where I'm like, okay, it's obvious they can do this. I'm not worried about their ability to do that. I'll end up with one, two, three things where I'm not sure they've got it or not, and then I'll go deeper into questions about that, and those are going to be questions typically That don't have a clear right or wrong answer, but are important. So, um, marketing attribution. You know, how do you think about, you know, first click versus last click, and how to learn and spend your money wisely. Or, you know, talk me through how you think about, how you break apart a retention problem, or whatever the, how do you get resources from a department where you don't have any official authority over them. Whatever that thing I think they're gonna need. Um, I usually use question pairs, and talk me through it, and tell me about a time when, Um, who does this well, in yo…

AI assessment note: “my entire interview process is going to be focused around figuring that out.”

Q And what was attractive then to you about kind of joining the VC world from the digital marketing perspective?

A You know, I first, my first taste was I was mentoring for a couple of years with 500 startups. So in the evening, cause they're in California time, most of these companies, I'd get on these Skype calls with people and they'd explain their business. And over the course of 45 minutes, we'd brainstorm a bunch of stuff they could test. And that was fun. And they get super excited. And then, you know, they emailed me two days later and they'd say, okay, I tested these things and this stuff happened and what should I do next? And I just love that quick cycle time to results. And the fact that each business is a totally new and ingenious and different challenge. So the constant novelty of it, and I was just really enjoying it. And so that's when, you know, when Dave said, Hey, like you could actually get paid and do this full time. I was like, wow, yes, that would be amazing. So I love the fast cycle times, brilliant, impressive founders. And just constantly seeing new and different business models.

AI assessment note: “I just love that quick cycle time to results. And the fact that each business”

Q Is paid advertising a no-no for you then?

A No, I think paid advertising for the, well, so it's got two great values. One is I think for everybody, it's a way to test quickly. So like Tim Ferriss talks about his book, The Four Hour Workweek. They didn't like his original title because he was selling supplements and it was something about selling drugs. And so he brainstormed five other titles and then he just bought Google Adwords and tested the five different titles to see which one got more clicks for this, you know, not yet published book. So advertising is a great way to, you know, get a lot of eyeballs and test stuff quickly. And then for businesses, I mean, if you can do paid acquisition in a way that your cost per customer acquisition is much smaller than the proven value of your customer, you can grow really quickly through advertising. Um, you know, world stores does this really well. Every product they launch, every site they launch, they really look at what a clicks cost. What does the product cost? Is there enough difference that we can grow a business? But for the majority of businesses, ultimately, they do need to expand to organic sources of growth beyond pure pay-driven acquisition.

AI assessment note: “No, I think paid advertising for the, well, so it's got two great values.”

Q It's quite kind of Slung, slung about in the industry. Is it another kind of BS techie term that, you know, might, might be similar to maybe, I don't know, evangelist or something. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Which is always an interesting one. Or chief visionary officer is another great one. But, but what does it mean, growth hacking? Can you shed some light on that one?

A Sure. I, and I, I cringe too. I make air quotes every time I use the word, but since it's a podcast, you can't see me like moving my little fingers up in the air. But it's gotten kind of a bad name, because it is a buzzword, and there's a bunch of charlatans, you know, who pass themselves off as growth hackers, and then sell you a load of goat poop and fairy dust, and it doesn't do anything. But, if you look back over the last 15 to 20 years, there's a bunch of companies like PayPal, Airbnb, Facebook, Hotmail, Twitter, LinkedIn, Dropbox, WhatsApp, Quora, Reddit. A bunch of companies who've gotten really big, really fast, without doing any traditional sales or marketing. I mean, that's hundreds of billions of dollars in market cap valuation. So call it, you know, growth hacking, call it whatever you want. There's this thing that these companies do. And that's what we're talking about. That's this process. It's a process and a mindset. Of saying, alright, you know, how do we get customers? What are the different ways we can try to get customers? And then coming up with designing experiments and executing them. Um, making sure all of your flows are super smooth. Looking for, are there social networks that you can jump onto? Are there referral systems you can build into your product? And then trying all this stuff and iterating on it and improving it.

AI assessment note: “It's a process and a mindset. Of saying, alright, you know, how do we get customers?”

Q is, and I have two different people in the show, and some are like, it's about optimizing funnels, you know, um, AB testing everything, and then others are like, it's about Taking the big swings, seeing outside the box, and going, we're going to test a few things, but big things. Is growth about moving the needle with big projects, or is it about actually optimizing lots of little things?

A So the answer, of course, is it depends. So let me just give you a simple set of rules to figure out which. At any given time, it's going to be, you know, 70, 31 way or the other. And one way or the other depends on where you are in your company's growth. So in the beginning, you, it's premature to start optimizing. You need to figure out the big stuff first. Once you've got one lever working, two levers working, then you can start devoting resources to optimizing and trying to squeeze more juice out of that lemon, but then you've always got kind of your 30% who are like, okay, what's the next big lever? Is there a market segment we're missing? You know, is there a use case that we're missing? Something like that. Is there a channel that we could start to develop?

AI assessment note: “So in the beginning, you, it's premature to start optimizing.”

Q Now, I would love to start with some chronology. So how did you make your way into the world of growth, and what was that entry point for you?

A I guess, I mean, my career started in Silicon Valley, and, you know, I was, like, humanities philosophy and rhetoric undergrad, and so I was kind of taking any job I could find, and what I sort of got pulled to Was just figuring out how to get customers stuff. Um, and eventually in, in 2004, I joined the growth team at PayPal. And obviously, you know, we know how that story went. Um, and I learned just a ton of stuff in almost 10, almost 11 years there. And then after that, I left. I became a VC myself. That's kind of when we met. And I got to see, you know, as a VC, you just get to see so many startups rapid fire and see inside of them and what's happening and their metrics and the people's personalities. And I just, To be honest, I started to see a lot of teams wasting a lot of money and a lot of real talent making the same mistakes over and over again, very preventable mistakes. And, you know, that combined with the fact that I didn't love fundraising, as we were just talking about. So I left VC and I started my own business where I work with startups and kind of help them avoid those preventable mistakes and find their, their high impact growth levers.

AI assessment note: “eventually in, in 2004, I joined the growth team at PayPal.”

Q finding that person, I think the hard thing is they do have different, um, needs, and different things resonate. What are some lessons on what works in terms of the messaging that you use? Because For one person on Athletic Greens, it might be recovery, and for other it might be optimal brain function or whatever that is. How do you think about effective messaging in a more horizontal product?

A So for a very horizontal product like Airtable, I mean, it's really hard, but you're going to find initial use cases and you're going to kind of start there and expand. But if you came to me with your startup and said, we have this product, we need to find our customers. I start by kind of using survivorship bias. On our side, so I'd say, let's find some people who actually did sign up for your product, and assume that whatever they think you do for them, that's the thing your customers want. And then I go and start to interview those people. And we use a jobs to be done interview technique, which kind of gets to the core of like, what was their problem, and what were they trying to achieve? And what they're trying to achieve, I, I say like a good headline on a landing page completes the sentence, now you can. So I'm trying to do this, and oh, now you can, you know, close out your quarter in minutes, not, Days. Or whatever it is that they're trying to do. So then I'm going to do those interviews. I'm going to find out the different Now You Can's, the different outcomes that people have. And then, you know, if I've got 10 or 50 customer interview transcripts, now, like, what I used to do is just read through them, and I'm looking for the verbs. Uh, now you can use a large language model to do that, and it's like, pull out all the verbs, all the outcomes of what people are trying…

AI assessment note: “I start by kind of using survivorship bias. On our side, so I'd say”

Q Okay, hit me. Final one. What's the most recent company growth strategy that's most impressed you?

A So one thing that is happening new that seemed last couple years that I can't believe more companies are not doing. And this, we actually, I mentioned it earlier, but if you go to some of these sites like Calm or Noom, they have these long convoluted onboarding flows that do a really good job of roping people in Getting them through the whole kind of information journey and building intent. And that's a neat thing because it can run you through an entire sales process without actually needing a salesperson. And to me, that just seems like the most obvious thing in the world for B to B companies to do for anything where customers maybe are only thinking about the problem and there's like eight steps to thinking about your solution or, you know, we just need to move them like a considered purchase, not impulse buy. Just seems like the most obvious thing to start to adopt those.

AI assessment note: “sites like Calm or Noom, they have these long convoluted onboarding flows”

Q If we just unpack a couple of elements there, 11 years at PayPal is a Hugely, uh, impactful, uh, segment of your career. What are one or two of your biggest lessons from that 11 years?

A So many of them. I think, you know, towards the end it got to the point when you're in a big company where having the right answers like five or 10% of the problem and getting the entire organization and to change people's mindset and align resources ends up becoming like 80 or 90% of the problem. I'm sure I've messed up the math there, but something like that. And so I'm very much more shifting my time and my hiring strategy and everything more Around influence. So that was a big piece of it. The other big one is when I look back on my time at PayPal, 90% of our growth came from, like, 10% of the stuff that we did. And by that, I mean, like, I could go back and say, you know, there are five or six things, obviously, before my time getting on eBay, uh, referral bonuses and, you know, network effects growth, getting early, getting engaged with web developers who were building the sites and implementing the payment systems, getting pre-integrated with shopping carts and hosts, some outbound sales. Like, that drove almost all their growth, but they did still, like, a ton of other stuff. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing campaigns, building products that, frankly, nobody ever used, and you can do that when you're generating hundreds of millions per year in free cash flow, but startups don't have that luxury, but then, you know, when I step back, and as a VC, a…

AI assessment note: “having the right answers like five or 10%... align resources ends up becoming 80 or 90%”

Q What's the hardest thing about figuring stuff out in growth?

A The hardest thing about figuring stuff out Is, honestly, I think it's hubris. I think it's that people come in and they don't realize they need to figure stuff out. They have their best practices, they have what worked in their last job, they have what they heard on your podcast, and they're like, all right, let's do this, and like, turn on the tap. And so, I mean, you see so many startups make this mistake where they overinvest in time and money and energy and building a product and launching some massive campaign, and it doesn't survive first contact with the customer. And they did that because they were sure they were right. But they weren't. And so just having that humility and that curiosity going in can save you so many ways to cycle, so much time and resource.

AI assessment note: “The hardest thing about figuring stuff out Is, honestly, I think it's hubris.”

Q Yeah, I get you totally. Ok, so we have that North Star metric. We know when to change it. How do we align teams around it?

A I'm a big fan of questions, because, you know, if you tell people things, you don't have children yet, but if you tell people things, they, they may or may not listen, but if you ask them questions, it forces them to think. So once I have it, explain the North Star to the whole team, I have each manager go around and ask each person, explain to me how your work impacts the North Star, and they're gonna, because they have to think at that point, and then they're gonna tell you something, and they may tell you something you didn't know about them, or their job function, or their business, Or you may realize they're missing an important piece of context about their business. So that usually leads to a really productive discussion. Yeah, it's just, and then after that, I'm like, okay, given that string of connections of you to the North Star, which could be two, three, four orders removed, what's the most impactful work you can be doing this quarter to move that number?

AI assessment note: “I have each manager go around and ask each person, explain to me”

Q the process. I'm an angel investment of yours, and you're going to advise me. Okay, so I've got that person who kind of knows 50% of the core skills, and then they can learn and adapt fast enough. Um, how do I find these candidates, Matt? I don't have a growth network to pull from. What is the right way to start the process and start getting candidates in Pipe?

A I've actually found, even when I worked for kind of unknown startups, the general broad inbound Tends to work. I find the mistake people make is that they apply too many filters to the search, right? You know, you write the job spec, and the recruiter's like, well, what do you want? And you're like, six years of experience in a Series B, high growth, FinTech, in London, went to a good university, former management consultant, and it's like, okay, but she already has a job. Like, what about the rest of the world? And so if you just remove filters like geography, or like a certain university degree, or certain work experience, often you can find these bright generalists I mean, the best, I'll say categorically, the best growth people I hired and managed in my time at PayPal had no marketing experience, had no product experience at all. I mean, they were coming into an organization where they were surrounded and supported, but they were both former scientists, and they were really good at figuring things out.

AI assessment note: “if you just remove filters... often you can find these bright generalists”

Q Now we've decided we want to hire this person. Uh, they're joining. I have no idea how to do onboarding. I think every startup does onboarding terribly for any role. For growth is even harder. Uh, and it is hard. What is the right onboarding process for a new growth hire at a startup?

A So every company is kind of different in how much they like process and organization, so I'm gonna just give you the core principles and people can adapt it to their systems. But there's basically two steps here. The first one is they need to become an information sponge. And they, fundamentally, there's like three or four buckets they need to get to learn everything they can about your customers. So it'd be some listening to customers and a lot of digesting customer research and looking at old experiments and what worked and what didn't and talking to sales and customer service people. They need to understand the business, the growth model, mathematically, you know, where do customers come, how much do they cost us, where are the conversions, drop-offs, which cohorts retain, all that stuff. And then they need to understand, like, your team and capabilities, and who are the other people here, and what can we do, and how do I work with them. Once you've got all that, then step two is prioritization. So remember, early on, I said, 90% of your results come from 10% of the stuff you do. So which work do we do in our limited runway is actually a super important question. So I'm gonna have this conversation with this person about, okay, given all that, you know, after 30 days, what should we be doing, and what should we not be doing, and why? And I'm gonna, even if I completely agree…

AI assessment note: “there's basically two steps here. The first one is they need to become an information sponge.”

Q Are there any quick and easy wins that people can do joining teams in the growth role? Uh, and should they be going for those quick wins?

A So there are every good growth person with some experience has a bag of quick wins that'll work. You know, changing a bad headline to a good now you can headline. Going back through, you know, most people track Signups and conversions for their paid stuff, but they don't look at customer value. And you may find that certain channels bring you higher or lower value customers, and you can just shift spend to the ones that bring you high value customers. Things like, if you haven't been emailing your database and you've got a good email sequence, you can wake up a bunch of dormant leads really quickly. So they're all like, and there's a dozens of these quick wins, and you can do them, and especially if you need money, or if you have one of those founders who's impatient for traction, fine. But if you think about any of those things I just said, They're kind of one and done. You know, once your headline's good, you're not gonna, you know, if your conversion goes from one percent to 10%, you're not gonna 10 x that number again.

AI assessment note: “there's a dozens of these quick wins, and you can do them”