The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 29 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Fishman: Referral loops fail in US edtech due to social stigma
“And what we found is that the problem with a invite or sort of referral loop in the United States is that there's a huge stigma associated with needing a tutor. And so parents Don't want to tell other parents that their kid is seeing a tutor because it makes t…”
Fishman: Hiring growth before product-market fit is disastrous for startups
“If you don't have product market fit, throwing a growth person into the mix is disastrous for your product because the last thing you want to do is put your product in the hands of more people when it sucks.”
Fishman: First growth hires must be mid-level player-coaches, not junior specialists
“Two junior, and you just have a bunch of order takers that can't prioritize their way out of a wet paper bag and figure out what they should be doing. Or they've maybe only seen it done one way before. They just sort of like want to rubber stamp it and say, we…”
Fishman: Solo practitioners should not hold the Head of Growth title
“Personally, I don't think you should be a head of growth as a solo practitioner. Cause like, yes, you're the head of growth, but like you're, A one person show, right? So I tend to think of the role more in the latter camp, which is like a manager of managers,…”
Fishman: Traditional executive interviewing is broken; side-by-side work works best
“I think that the traditional interview process for leaders is broken and the best way to learn about someone is really working side by side with them.”
Fishman: Failed entrepreneurs make the best early growth hires
“I also like failed entrepreneurs for this role because they have a really good appreciation for how important it is to acquire and retain customers.”
Fishman: Treat employee onboarding like customer activation to drive retention
“Think about it like onboarding a customer. This is your activation experience. This is going to drive long-term retention and success of your customer, except now your customer is an employee.”
Fishman: High execution speed makes most company mistakes reversible
“And when you move at that pace, there's very few mistakes that are actually permanent. Like you can almost change Anything, right? And reverse decisions.”
Fishman: Creator platforms require extreme customer reverence due to public amplification
“When you work with creators, they have the biggest and loudest megaphones on the internet. And you really learn to respect their input into the product building process and decision-making.”
Fishman: Growth experimentation yields more failures than successes over time
“You're going to be wrong probably more often than you're right. Especially as you do more and more things it gets harder to be right over the long term.”
Fishman: Over-rotating solely on quantitative data is an organizational failure
“I almost never rely on gut. But I also think it's a kind of a failure to over rotate on just quantitative data.”
Fishman: Growth teams connect users to existing value, not new products
“The overall job of a growth function or a growth org is to connect more people to the value that the company is already creating.”
Fishman: First growth hires should be mid-level player-coaches, not executives
“There's really is like a sweet spot here. To junior. And you just have a bunch of order takers that can't prioritize their way out of a wet paper bag and figure out what they should be doing or to or they've maybe only seen it done one way before. And so they …”
Fishman: Viral products should embed growth within the product organization
“If your product should really be growing like virally via invitation, referral, collaboration, things like that, then you probably want to start with growth as part of the product work.”
Fishman: Standalone growth teams eventually fold into product or marketing
“Most of the standalone growth teams that I've seen eventually get folded into one of the other orgs. Product marketing, something like that.”
Fishman: User-generated growth loops have higher growth ceilings than paid loops
“So things that are generated by users typically have a much higher ceiling because every new user can generate and participate in that loop. Things that are generated by the company Or paid advertising or things like that tend to have lower scopes because ther…”
Fishman: Startups should master one or two core loops before expanding
“I typically recommend that companies start with a core thing, one core loop, or maybe two core loops that that they can really work on for a while, but you have to be able to project that out and see when you're going to start to run out of steam. And then try…”
Fishman: Growth hires should learn month one, strategize month two, align month three
“Month one is basically learning, building relationships, evaluation of the team. If there is a team month, two is typically iteration and improvement on the growth strategy. Or creation of one if it doesn't exist. And then month three is really like longer ter…”
Fishman: Great growth hires arrive on day one with a plan
“One of the things that separates the good from the great is a lot of the best people that I've worked with, they come in on day one, and they've already been thinking about the business. They've got a plan. They've done some homework. They've done some learnin…”
Fishman: Domain experts falsely assume others share their level of understanding
“That the most knowledgeable person Always thinks that everyone else has the same level of understanding as them, and they're always wrong.”
Fishman: Interactive prototypes are far more effective than text for product communication
“I think a prototype is worth a whole chapter in a book. So I try to communicate with visual aids whenever possible. Like it's really important. Words on a page are great. A picture of what the thing is actually doing is even better. It's something that people …”
Fishman: Social media backlash to brand rebrands fades after two weeks
“Everyone rushes to social media for their hot takes. They don't like this logo. They don't like the way this thing looks. Who designed this? This could be done by a two-year-old with a crayon. Like everyone's negative about it. And then it all fades away in tw…”
Fishman: Zimride pivoted to Lyft within five months of his joining
“And I joined a company called Zimride as their head of growth. And we pivoted Zimride to Lyft in about, I don't know, four or five months after I joined.”
Fishman: Patreon's major growth mistakes came from skipping qualitative creator feedback
“The mistakes that we made at Patreon were typically just looking at numbers and not actually, and thinking, oh, these numbers say that if we do this, it's in the best interest of creators, it's going to work great. Like we know what our bounding boxes and our …”
Fishman: Lyft relied on a give-and-get referral loop to scale riders
“We had a very strong what I would call like clinically a financially incentivized viral loop. So this is your classic, like give, get referral structure. I invite you to lift and you sign up and you get ride credit. And then once you take a ride, I get ride cr…”
Fishman: Wyzant's Lyft-style give-get referral loop was a historic flop
“We tried to implement a referral loop like Lyft, where, hey, as a parent, I would invite another person. I would get credit towards tutoring. They would get credit towards tutoring. And we built a really nice system for doing this. And no one used it. And so i…”
Fishman: Every founder and leader should read 'The First 90 Days'
“I'm a really big fan of the book. I think everyone should read the book. The first 90 days. I have a copy somewhere. It may be like right here on my desk. Student of that book. It is fantastic. I recommend it to everyone.”
Fishman: Patreon repositioned from crowdfunding to membership based on qualitative testing
“We built up a lot of confidence that shifting from crowdfunding to membership, which is what Patreon is now, was sort of the right move.”
Fishman: Locket is an exceptional example of viral product-led growth
“Lockett is really cool. One, it's entirely product-led growth. The story behind how they got started is awesome. They focus on a bunch of those principles that I talked about, scarcity, Of invite and sending to people. It's a super simple product experience, h…”