Some people call it better marketing, others better product management. This presentation is about what a Growth team is about, why you need one, how to set it up, and what it means for the future of product development.

1. True University 2018
Why and how you should build a Growth team?
Thibault Imbert
Director of Growth - Adobe, Creative Cloud

2. True University 2018
Who is this guy?
Designer Developer
Programming
Teacher
Sales PM
1998 2004 2004-2008 2008-2010 2010

3. True University 2018
At night, I mix flour and water

4. It starts with product market fit
You can’t grow a crappy product
True University 2018
Before you think about having a Growth team…

5. True University 2018
Retention is everything
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Week0
Week2
Week4
Week6
Week8
Week10
Week12
Week14
Week16
Week18
Week20
Week22
Week24
Week26
Week28
Week30
Week32
Week34
Week36
Week38
Week40
Week42
Week44
Week46
Week48
Week50
Week52
Measuring the % of users
who continue to use your
product, by week,
following their first
launch.
Good
Bad

6. True University 2018
If your users are not sticking around
Spend time first figuring out why, and get to product market fit
Not just a quantitative effort, but qualitative too

7. True University 2018
Agenda
1. 2. 3.
What is Growth?
How is that different than
marketing?
Why a Growth team?
Everybody cares about Growth.
Don’t we already do that?
How to run a Growth team
Provide the right framework to
setup your team for success.

8. What is Growth?
True University 2018

9. True University 2018
Product
Getting users to
product value
faster
Engineering
Develop using
build-measure-
learn approach
Marketing
Integrated
marketing
approach
User Research
&
Data
Qual/Quant
Integrated
marketing
approach
Qual/Quant
Growth is a blend of various disciplines

10. True University 2018
Silos Holistic
Product
Sales
Marketing
Growth
team
Growth is end to end, optimizing every step of the funnel

11. True University 2018
Acquisition
The AARRR funnel
Activation Retention Revenue Referral
Best places to
find your users
Get your users
to build a habit
Nurture the
relationship
Monetize Viral loop

12. True University 2018
Principles of a Growth team
Impact Over Everything Else
Growth Is Product, User Research, Marketing, Engineering & Data
Rapid Experimentation
Growth Is End to End
Growth Is Never Done

13. True University 2018
Product vs Growth
BOTH
GETTING USERS TO
EXPERIENCE THAT CORE
VALUE AS OFTEN AS
POSSIBLE
GROWTH
GETTING THE
LARGEST % OF OUR
AUDIENCE TO
EXPERIENCE CORE
VALUE AS QUICKLY AS
POSSIBLE
PRODUCT
BUILDING CORE
VALUE
Credit: Chamath Palihapitiya (First Head of Growth at Facebook)

14. True University 2018
Typical shower questions
Who is my audience?
What problem is my
product solving?
How do I enable my users
to achieve their goals?
What are the friction areas
within the product experience?
How much of that is a problem?
What defines Activation for my
product?
What naturally pulls my users
back in the product?
How do we help the user build a
habit using our product?
Which features are being used or
unused? How does that affect
retention?
Product Growth Both

15. Why create a Growth team?
True University 2018

16. True University 2018
We all care about
Growth!
Everyone cares about Growth

17. True University 2018
We all care about
Growth!
But then, new priorities show up
Release/Launch
We have to ship
this!

18. True University 2018
We all care about
Growth!
Marketing tasks (almost always) get deprioritized
Release/Launch
We have to ship
this!
No engineering
capacity for
marketing tasks.
We all care about
Growth again!

19. True University 2018
This does not work

20. True University 2018
A parallel team designed for velocity, focused on a North Star metric
Product team
Growth team
Focused on a North Star metric
Self served (design, data, marketing, etc.)
No context switching
Owns ideation, definition, execution and
results analysis

21. True University 2018
Who is on this team, initially?
PM Engineer
Yup, that's enough to start!

22. True University 2018
Later, you can scale
PM Engineer Marketer Data AnalystDesigner

23. It’s not just
technical skills,
it’s a mindset.
True University 2018

24. How to run a Growth team?
True University 2018

25. True University 2018
Pillars of a Growth team
A North Star metric
Growth Model (audit and forecasting)
Qualitative research
A Growth pipeline
An experimentation platform
Sprints

26. True University 2018
Initially, it will go like this
We should increase our
open and click rates!
We should send push
notifications!

27. True University 2018
Where do you have a problem and what do you want to focus on?
Acquisition Activation Retention Revenue Referral
This is the most important lever
The first impression you make on your users
Lifting Activation will lift all boats

28. True University 2018
We tend to lean towards lagging indicators of success
DAU
WAU
MAU
Output Metrics
(lagging indicators)

29. True University 2018
They are useful to track high-level health, but not for experimentation
Metrics like DAU, WAU or MAU are output metrics
They are not specific enough, not actionable
Instead, we want to pick a leading indicator of success
We need a North Star metric causal to the desired outcome (here, retention)

30. True University 2018
Bad North Star examples
WMI (Weekly Mobile Installs)
WNS (Weekly New Signups)
MUS (Monthly Unique Sessions)

31. True University 2018
You want a North Star metric that captures user value, causal to retention
YBG (Yearly Guests)
WR (Weekly Repins) WHM (Weekly Hosted Meetings) WMS (Weekly Messages Sent)
WT (Weekly Trips)

32. True University 2018
The North Star helps everyone understand what being active means, it is also:
Memorable
Measurable
Actionable

33. True University 2018
Still output (lagging indicator), but this defines
what Active means. It also helps us figure out
the input metrics that will move retention up.
WR (Weekly Repins)
WHM (Weekly Hosted Meetings)
WMS (Weekly Messages Sent)
WT (Weekly Trips)
YBG (Yearly Active Guest)
You want a North Star metric that captures user value, causal to retention

34. True University 2018
How to find your North Star metric?
Combination of qualitative and quantitative research
Apply product intuition/sense too
What is the best action in your product that captures user value?
Does that action highly correlates or is causal to retention?

35. True University 2018
Then break it down into input metrics that will drive that North Star up
Output North Star
(lagging indicator)
WHM
(Weekly Hosted Meetings)
Inputs
(leading indicator)
Calendar, Slack Integration Notifications
Recurring Meetings Setup

36. True University 2018
From North Star to habit per user segment (Hobbyist, Semi-Pro, Pro)
Hobbyist: 7 Exports in first 28 days
WAE
(Weekly Active Exports) Semi-Pro: 14 Exports in first 28 days
Pro: 21 Exports in first 28 days
Hypothetical North Star Metric
for Creative Cloud products

37. True University 2018
Through correlation analysis, find input metrics: Lightroom example
Habit formed
Hobbyist: 7 Exports in
first 28 days
Aha! momentSetup moment
Import a photo on
Day 1
White balance in
first 7 days
The user has done
actions to experience the
aha! moment
The user has established
the habit around the
core value prop.
The user has experienced
the core value prop for
the first time.

38. True University 2018
Moving away from the gut feel
You don’t want to start with tactics, but data
Is it worth doing rather than will this work?
What will be the compound impact of doing this on your north star metric?
To answer that question, we use a Growth model

39. True University 2018
The Growth Model
10% of your paid customers never
download the app
40% don’t launch the app the
second week
* fake data

40. True University 2018
Forecast the impact of your test on your output metric
Should we lift 3% in
downloads?

41. True University 2018
Forecast the impact of your test on your output metric
Should we lift 3% in
First week repeat?

42. True University 2018
Forecast the impact of your test on your output metric
Forecasted impact

43. True University 2018
Qualitative research
Quantitative tells you the what, Qualitative tells you the why

44. True University 2018
Becoming the user
Use the product, build empathy
Become the user (ethnography)
Meet with new users in their home environment, in person
Talk first to users who did not stick around (no queries will tell you what they felt)

45. True University 2018
The Customer Empathy Framework
bit.ly/customer-empathy-framework

46. True University 2018
Growth pipeline
Then we develop hypotheses leading up to experiments
Hypotheses are listed and ranked using the Upside/Confidence/Effort score

47. True University 2018
Growth pipeline
Upside:
Is it worth doing? (Volume)
Confidence:
How likely it this to succeed?
Effort:
How many engineers, designers
and marketers do we need?

48. True University 2018
An experimentation platform
Invest in a platform to run your experiments (A/B tests)
3rd party initially, then build your own
The more time spent in settings tests up, the lower the ROI is

49. True University 2018
Sprints
You want to set a timeline for achieving results
Pick a target number for your North Star metric and run
Not too short or people don’t have time to step back and think
We are testing 90 days currently

50. True University 2018
Evolution of a Growth team
Crawl Walk Run

51. True University 2018
Crawl: Prove the model, survive skepticism
Prove velocity
Go after low hanging fruits
Target simple metrics (open rates, click rates, launch rates, etc.)
Get quick wins to get organization excited and executive sponsoring
No behavioral triggers (only batch & blast)
No experimentation platform needed, all tests rollout and analysis is manual

52. True University 2018
Walk: Increase velocity
Increase precision (North Star metric)
Define and target the input variables driving that north star
Start forecasting impact of experiments on your North Star metric
Support for behavioral triggers (when the user does X, do Y)
Experimentation platform rolls out tests and analysis is automated

53. True University 2018
Run: Maturity in metrics and agility
Optimize for scale
Design the right organization (data & platform) to run faster
Build predictive models to detect specific behaviors (churn, etc.)

54. True University 2018
Who does the team report up to?
A few options:
Growth as a separate function
Cross functional
Distributed

55. True University 2018
Growth as its own organization
CEO
VP Product VP Engineering VP MarketingVP Growth
Growth
Engineering
Growth PMs
Growth Designers
Growth Marketers
Can be hard to setup in existing large
organizations where engineering, design and
marketing don’t sit in the expected
organization.

56. True University 2018
Growth as cross functional
CEO
VP Product VP Engineering VP Marketing
Growth PM
Growth Designers
Growth Marketers
Growth
Engineers
The whole company lends resources
to form a Growth force

57. True University 2018
At Adobe: Growth as distributed “squads”
CEO
VP Product #1 VP Product #2 VP Product #3
Growth Squad #1 Growth Squad #2 Growth Squad #3
Each squad is autonomous and owns engineers,
designers, marketers, PMs, loaned by each respective
Product organization.
The centralized Growth team provides platform, tools,
resources if needed and quantitative insights.
Centralized Growth
Team

58. True University 2018
Growth and Product
Growth should influence Product Roadmap prioritization
Reward usage vs shipping
Build, Test, Measure, Learn

59. True University 2018
Summary
Before anything, get to product fit
Growth is full funnel, end to end and never done
If everyone owns Growth, no one is really doing it
You want a separate/dedicated team focused on Growth
Don’t focus on lagging indicators to measure success
Find your North Star metric and the leading indicators that drives it
Focus experiments on the North Star metric
Go 3rd party before building your own experimentation platform
Walk before you run

60. True University 2018
Download the slides
http://bit.ly/why-growth

61. Thank you
timbert@adobe.com
True University 2018