Adam Fishman
Partner & Executive in Residence, Reforge. On 2 shows, 2 appearances, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
operatorexecutivehostauthor@fishmanaf ↗LinkedIn ↗adamfishman.com ↗
Adam Fishman is a growth executive who led early growth at Lyft and served as VP of Product and Growth at Patreon. He later scaled Imperfect Foods to over $600M in revenue as Chief Product and Growth Officer before becoming an advisor, host of Startup Dad, and Partner at Reforge.
2shows
2appearances
47statements
4resolved
3supported
0contradicted
75%fully supported
10said about them ↓ Everything Adam Fishman said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
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…”
Super Pumped accurately portrayed Uber's aggressive tactics against Lyft
“So much of that story was stuff that I had experienced pretty regularly while I was at Lyft battling against Uber. So one part of me was like, oof, I remember that. God, that was hard. Another part of me was happy that to see that all of the things were out in…”
Executive function and execution skills cannot be taught on the job
“Teaching somebody how to execute is not that fun, right? That's a hard skill. Like the ability to execute is something like executive function skills and things like that. If you haven't developed those by the time you were an adult, I don't know that I'm goin…”
Founders should hire first growth roles internally to reduce risk
“I tend to skew more towards internal hire, to be perfectly honest, because I believe in creating opportunity inside a company. I think it's not done often enough. And I also believe that helping people transition into new roles is a way to get more people into…”
Effective onboarding can intentionally decrease top-of-funnel conversion to boost retention
“I actually think if you're doing it right, sometimes conversion should actually decrease a little bit. So you might actually have fewer people getting all the way through successfully. But I think that's okay because a lot of those people were probably not the…”
Severe executive infighting at Imperfect Foods impaired company planning and progress
“Imperfect Foods was somewhat similar. Amazing mission, really great financial strategy, fantastic CFO, but a lot of infighting at the C-suite. And it made it really difficult for us to plan and move the company forward together because people were kind of at o…”
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.”
Founders shouldn't hire growth talent by pattern-matching specific senior leaders
“I get asked all the time that how do you hire growth people? And it's usually something like, hey, how do we find you, but 10 years earlier in your career? And it feels like. That question is missing the first principles approach to hiring a growth person. If …”
Product teams must address users' emotional mindsets before making logical appeals
“Most people come to your product with an emotional frame. And a lot of people want to appeal to their logical brain right away. And the reality is don't do that. And so you have to understand the sort of mindset that people are in.”
Deep growth specialties like SEO and paid acquisition require external hires
“When you are onto something and you really need expertise and you don't have that expertise internally. Yes, I think hiring externally is the right thing to do at that point, because those are really specific skills that some people have taken years to learn. …”
High user motivation during onboarding allows deliberate friction for data collection
“It's also probably the most motivated that someone is going to be about your product since they're typically starting their onboarding journey with you at a time where they're like, I need this thing really badly that you're selling. And so they're really moti…”
Human onboarding interventions boosted Patreon creator revenue by 25 percent
“What we realized through a lot of experimentation was the idea of connecting someone with a human being, the right person at the right time would improve the first month of revenue or the second month of revenue that a creator made on the platform by 25%.”
Onboarding should use opinionated defaults without eliminating user choices
“One of our product principles, which became opinionated defaults, which is basically making it hard to do the wrong thing when you're setting up your Patreon page and easy to do the right thing, but not eliminating choice.”
Micro-optimizing onboarding flows rarely moves metrics without fundamentally new insights
“Tweaking the onboarding experience and trying to tune it in a very micro way, because the reality is like, that doesn't really move the needle that often, especially once you've got it in a pretty good foundational place. And only when you discover something r…”
Tech industry layoffs are far from finished, Fishman predicted in 2022
“And I don't think we're done yet. I think we're pretty far from being done, but it's really important.”
Hiring managers refusing to allow reverse reference checks are red flags
“And if a company says no, or a person says no. I think that actually says a bit more about them than, you know, anything else, if they're trying to kind of withhold that from you, because why would you? If I'm a great manager, I'm happy to have you talk to peo…”
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.”
The other half of the tape: Adam Fishman's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 10 times in 8 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Lenny Rachitsky 2Brian Balfour 2Ben Williams 2Austin Hay 2Tal Raviv 1Fareed Mosavat 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Lenny's Podcast 10
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 6 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- Brian Balfour: 10 lessons on career, growth, and life
- The ultimate guide to Martech | Austin Hay (Reforge, Ramp, Runway)
- My favorite interview questions from 100+ guests
- Monetizing passions, scaling marketplaces, and stories from a creator economy vet | Camille Hearst
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Adam's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 20VCLEDGER | Partner & Executive in Residence, Reforge | 1 +1 | 29 | 100% 2/2 | full record on 20VC → |
| LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | Partner & Executive in Residence, Reforge | 1 | 18 | 50% 1/2 | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |