Andy Johns, former growth leader at Facebook, discusses the quantitative and experimental backgrounds that make effective early growth hires.
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“One of the best early growth leaders at Facebook was a physicist. He was trained as an experimental physicist.”
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More from Andy Johns
Insight
Candidates Refusing Case Studies Lack Early-Stage Startup Execution Mindset
“So I think if somebody's unwilling to do a case study, you probably have somebody who wants to be running growth at a large established business like Airbnb, and they just want to come over and take over a team of 50 or a hundred people and not be at that leve…”
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Breakout Growth Comes From Major Product Initiatives, Not A/B Testing
“I have yet to come across a company that has been a big breakout that's progressed from, say, Series B, C, D, E, And go on to these massive growth rounds, predominantly on the back of baby testing. I've never seen it. I see it happen when the startup takes thr…”
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Insight
Andy Johns: Startups over-rely on growth optimization over product innovation
“A company quickly assumes that the answer to more growth is an optimization-based approach where they start running a bunch of experiments and looking at data, A-B testing their way towards the future, and it overwhelms the company's ability to then start taki…”
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Insight
Andy Johns: Do not hire growth roles before product-market fit
“I wouldn't even consider hiring a head of growth or building a growth team until you have a clear indicator of product market fit, which is some amount of exponential organic growth.”
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Disclosure
Wealthfront Shut Down Its Growth Team to Focus on New Products
“And so eventually what we did at the Wealthfront in the early days of Wealthfront is I was the VP of growth, but at one point we said, you know what, the best thing for our business at this point is to shut down growth. And in its wake, Replace it with another…”
Andy JohnsNov 17, 2021▶ 16:0720Growth: Top Growth Lessons from the Early Facebook, Twitter and Quora Days, The Most Important Question to Ask When Building Your Growth Team, How To Test For True Candidate Depth and Quality When Hiring for Growth with Andy Johns, Venture Partner @ Unu
Insight
Growth Is Market, Product, Delight, and Acquisition Multiplied
“My preferred starting point, if I go into any company, is I like to begin with this background of assessing market times core product value times moments of delight times ability to acquire customers.”
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