The Ledger
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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 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.”
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 …”
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…”
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 …”