The Ledger
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Ed Baker: Uber secretly ran India test against CEO orders, doubling conversion
“We decided to run a test In Hyderabad, India, where we said, let's let riders request their first ride without putting a credit card number in. In fact, we were told by our CEO not to run that test because he felt so strongly against it, but we had so much con…”
Baker: Defying CEO to test credit-card-free signups doubled Uber's Hyderabad conversions
“We decided to run a test in Hyderabad, India, where we said, let's let riders request their first ride without putting a credit card number in. In fact, we were told by our CEO not to run that test because he felt so strongly against it, but we had so much con…”
Baker: Uber growth team pulled weekly Thursday all-nighters for Kalanick
“And so we would have growth team meetings with him every Friday morning. We'd usually pull all nighters every Thursday night, preparing for our meeting with him on Friday morning.”
Baker: Very few products maintain a K-factor above 1 today
“I think very few products have K-Factors above one these days. It's just a lot harder to get things to go viral these days.”
Ed Baker: Experienced growth hires do not require elaborate onboarding setups
“I don't think you necessarily have to have an amazing onboarding set up for this new head of growth that you're hiring. And again, if it's an experienced person, they'll be able to figure out a lot of it on their own.”
Major initiatives drive more growth than hundreds of A/B tests combined
“When I look back at my time at Uber, every year we maybe had one or two things like that that accounted for more growth than everything else combined.”
Ed Baker: Startups must achieve product-market fit before hiring for growth
“I think you want to find product market fit before you start to work on growth. Sometimes startups will say, oh, we need to hire a growth leader in order to find product market fit. But I actually think they're two different things.”
Testing minor UI tweaks like button colors is a waste of time
“One nice thing about a needle mover, it actually takes very little data to see that this is a needle mover. You need more data for the smaller Improvements. Maybe changing the color of this button, and you want to see, does that improve conversion by a fractio…”
Ed Baker: Growth Hacking Has Become Overly Quantitative and Metric-Focused
“I think growth has become almost too quantitative and analytical, and when people talk about growth hacking, they're almost like focused too much on the metrics. For me, the most exciting part is the creative side of growth, coming up with super creative ways …”
Ed Baker: Growth hires who do not ask founders for help are a red flag
“I'd say it's almost a red flag if the person you've just hired is not asking you for help as founder or CEO.”
Ed Baker: Retention and engagement drive growth more than acquisition as companies scale
“Basically as you get
Bigger.
Those two metrics of retention and engagement actually become a lot more important to maintaining growth than new user acquisition.”
Reframing invites as announcements enabled Facebook to surpass Mixi in Japan
“Japan went from one of our slowest growing countries to one of our fastest growing countries. Shortly after that, we surpassed our local competitor in Japan.”
Uber's rider app driver button matched all paid marketing driver signups
“By adding that little button in the rider app that said become a driver, suddenly we had as many new drivers signing up from that button as we did from all of our paid marketing efforts combined.”
Ed Baker: Facebook and Uber growth leaders reported directly to CEO
“And in both of those cases, they had separate growth teams where the growth leader reported directly to the CEO. And these teams were structured cross-functionally.”
Baker: Companies do not necessarily need standalone growth teams
“There's no one right way to do it. I don't think you necessarily need a separate growth team and a separate product team, and I've seen companies that sometimes build the growth team within product.”
Baker: External growth leads must have prior leading-company growth experience
“I think if you're going to hire someone externally to start up a new growth team within the company, it's really important. I think that that person has had experience on a growth team at one of these leading companies so they know what they're doing. Whereas …”
Travis Kalanick tested Ed Baker with an Uber promo card case study
“So when Travis, the CEO of Uber was interviewing me, he actually gave me a challenge problem about Uber promo cards. And he just said, we have these promo cards. We haven't really figured out exactly how we're going to use these yet. Tell me how you would make…”
Baker: Senior executive hires require less pre-defined role scope
“I think the more senior the leader is that you're recruiting, the less defined the role needs to be.”
Ed Baker: Executive hires not asking CEOs for help is a red flag
“I'd say it's almost a red flag if the person you've just hired is not asking you for help as founder or CEO.”
Ed Baker: Core Virality Frameworks Have Remained Unchanged Over Decades
“The basic framework of virality is the same today as it was even 20 years ago when I first started working on it, in terms of how you calculate your K-factor and how you draw out the viral loop. The framework is the same, but the channels themselves have chang…”
Ed Baker says Friendly reached 25 million users with zero marketing spend
“That grew to about twenty-five million registered users all through viral growth, no market”
Ed Baker: Facebook's North Star metric was monthly active users
“Well, so at Facebook, when I was there, the North Star metric was monthly active users.”
Ed Baker: Uber selected weekly trips as its North Star metric
“Similarly at Uber, our North Star metric, in fact, one of the first things I did when I started the growth team at Uber was said to the team, we've got to come up with our North Star metric. We decided on, instead of something like monthly active riders, We sa…”
Baker: Uber CEO Travis Kalanick onboarded growth head without formal process
“So when I think back to my onboarding experience at Uber, for example, there wasn't much to it. I was basically told by our CEO, who was my manager, here are five people for you to start the growth team with. Go.”
Baker: Pair incoming growth leaders with company veterans on day one
“I do think one of the most important things is to at least think about, well, who can be on their team on day one? I think that's probably one of the most important things. It's like, think about who are the initial people that can be on that growth team with …”