Optimizing solely for top-of-funnel signups degrades downstream user quality
Darius Contractor · 20Growth: Five Signs of Top Growth Talent and How to Detect Them, How to Structure and Conduct the Most Efficient Customer Discovery Process & The Framework to Determine Your North Star and When To Change it with Darius Contractor, Former VP Growth @ Airt · May 18, 2022 · at 8:02
Darius Contractor, former VP of Growth at Airtable, explains why growth teams should avoid relying on single naive metrics and instead track composite or usage-based North Stars.
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“So to make that real, oftentimes people will pick one metric, just like signups, and they'll pull really hard on it, like more, more, more, more signups. But then we've all seen stories of like these unintended consequences, where they're like, they make the signup too easy, and they get all these like low quality people, or they even like fake the value prop, like Infinite money for free, free iPod, sign up now, and you get all these signups, you've like boosted the metric, but you've created like, you've messed up your funnel, the downstream is really bad, et cetera.”
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