"Unlocking Growth and Building a Successful Team: Strategies and Insights"

Jul 20, 2023

3 min read

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Introduction:
Growth is a paramount factor in the success of any company. It is crucial to have a dedicated growth team that can accelerate the overall growth trajectory. Facebook's rapid expansion from 50 million to 2 billion monthly active users can be attributed to the establishment of its growth team. However, before investing in a full-fledged growth team, it is essential to ensure that there are no underlying issues in user retention.

Improving Retention:
The stability of long-term retention is a vital benchmark for success. It is crucial to compare your retention rates with other companies in your vertical. Additionally, analyzing the performance of newer cohorts compared to older cohorts can indicate product improvement and value proposition enhancement. Here are average long-term retention targets for five business verticals:

Social network: Aim for stable long-term retention above 10%.
E-commerce: Target stable long-term retention above 30%.
SaaS: Strive for stable long-term retention above 80%.
Mobile gaming: Aim for stable long-term retention above 20%.
Marketplace: Target stable long-term retention above 40%.

Building a Growth Team:
A dedicated growth team is formed to fuel product-market fit through structured experiments. It is crucial to hire a team lead with prior growth experience, as this characteristic was highlighted by more than 90% of growth experts. Interestingly, 60% of growth experts interviewed were former founders themselves. Companies usually make their first growth team hire when they have around 15 engineers working on the product.

Setting Growth Goals:
Setting realistic growth goals is essential for motivating the team. The most common advice from growth experts is to set goals that are challenging yet achievable. A goal that is halfway between "sandbagging" and "too hard to achieve" strikes the right balance. It is crucial to establish absolute milestones that the entire team can work towards.

Identifying Growth Channels:
Understanding user behavior and identifying relevant channels is key to successful growth. Referrals were highlighted as the top channel within the first year by approximately 70% of growth experts. It is crucial to focus on channels that align with existing user behavior. Most products find one or two relevant channels early on that work effectively for them.