10 种永远无效的增长策略 | Elena Verna(Amplitude、Miro、Dropbox、SurveyMonkey)
10 growth tactics that never work | Elena Verna (Amplitude, Miro, Dropbox, SurveyMonkey)
Growth Is an Emerging Field
Elena Verna: Growth is a fairly new field. You have a lot of renowned interest in growth hacks, like what is the sure things to get growth. In the age of social media everybody and anybody tries to share their tips and tricks. Oftentimes things that are completely out of context or they are very specific to one example and actually do not apply as a pattern.
Introducing Our Guest
Lenny Rachitsky: We’re going to start with growth tactics that never work. If you see these items on your roadmap, you should probably not do them. What’s number one?
Growth Tactics That Never Work
Elena Verna: We live in tech. There’s always lots of startups and startups obviously looking to grow. There is a huge misconception in the field that in order to get growth going, you need a growth team. To figure out your product market fit and how to distribute it, it’s not something that you can outsource to somebody.
Lenny Rachitsky: Powerful words. I’m loving this list already.
Hiring Growth Roles Too Early
Elena Verna: Number two, this was my favorite and it might be a little spicy. Never ever once have I seen a rebrand or redesign, especially of UK marketing site produce good performance results. New CMO comes in designing their website or designing the brand as if it was reflection of their personal taste, and oftentimes it’s promised with our acquisition is going to go up and it never materializes into anything meaningful.
Founder-Led Growth
Lenny Rachitsky: A lot of contrary intakes here, I love this.
Elena Verna: Number three, if every single one of your initiatives that you’re doing on growth is an experiment that’s a problem. It’s almost like a disease, like a paralyzing disease.
Sales vs. Growth: Who to Hire First
Lenny Rachitsky: Today my guest is Elena Verna, my first ever third time repeat guest. Elena is the smartest person that I know on B2B Growth. She’s also hilarious. She’s led growth at companies like Miro Amplitude, Dropbox, and SurveyMonkey. She’s advised dozens of companies on growth including Superhuman, MongoDB, Netlify, Similarweb, Sanity, Maze, so many more. In our conversation, Elena shares 10 growth strategies and tactics that never work yet that she keeps seeing people and companies invest lots of resources into. She also covers her three favorite growth frameworks that help you wrap your head around how to think about growth, and she also does a short dive into the non-traditional career paths that we both went down. If you spend any time working on product growth or lead people or work with people working on growth, this episode is for you. If you enjoy this podcast, don’t forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It’s the best way to avoid missing feature episodes and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Elena Verna.
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Elena, thank you so much for being here. Welcome back to the podcast, our first ever third-time repeat guest. What an honor Dancing if you’re not watching on video. Thank you for being here. I was actually just looking at our first episode, which we recorded almost over two years ago, September of 2022, and someone just today left a comment. People are still finding and watching it, and this comment encapsulates why I love having you on this podcast. This person said, “Wow, every word from Elena encapsulates years of knowledge. This is one to digest, slowly go back to and put on repeat. Thanks for sharing your experience with the world”
Growth Challenges in Mature Companies
Elena Verna: Thank you for having me. And my north star metric is insights per minute. That’s what I try to use whenever I have any live meetings with people so it squarely fits within what I’m optimizing for. That’s great.
When to Hire a Growth Lead
Lenny Rachitsky: That needs to be my KPI on this podcast, “Insights per minute.”
Growth Illusions: Rebranding and Homepage Redesigns
Elena Verna: I think you have it. I think your insights per minute is pretty high.
Lenny Rachitsky: That is. I do shoot for that, although I have learned you also needed to feel good and feel their story. There’s an interesting combo stuff. You can’t just be insight, insight, insight.
Tactic 4: Over-Obsessing About Competitors
Elena Verna: It’s all about how you present them too. Storytelling is a big portion of it actually to stick.
The Benchmark Data Trap
Lenny Rachitsky: Already insight. That’s an insight right there. There’s two areas that I want to spend time on with you, and these are areas I know you’ve been thinking a lot about. One is growth tactics that never work, that people keep spending time on and waste their time on. And I know you have a nice list of things you’ve seen that just don’t work that people keep trying. And then two is growth frameworks, your favorite growth frameworks to help people wrap their mind around how to think about growth and grow their product. We’re going to start with growth tactics that never works. Maybe just frame what we’re going to talk about, talk about what this list and collection of tactics that we’re going to talk about is.
Elena Verna: Growth is a fairly new field compared to marketing or product management or engineering. There’s a lot of people that are now accumulated that have 10 years or so experience, but there’s also a lot of newcomers and because there’s ratio of actually newcomers, it’s much higher than those people that have five, 10 years of experience of doing growth. You have a lot of renowned interest in growth hacks. What is the sure things to get growth? What is the sure thing to get that metric up? How can I contribute to success with the company the fastest way possible? All of these shortcuts and obviously in the age of social media where everybody and anybody tries to share their tips and tricks and this and that, people are grasping for oftentimes things that are completely out of context or they are very specific to one example and actually do not apply as a pattern or simply not even applicable to their type of business whatsoever.
There’s just a lot of failure happening in growth teams. Actually, I think growth teams are becoming one of those departments that has a higher head of growth firing rate than even CMOs because people are coming in, there’s a bunch of expectations, “Hey, you’re ahead of growth or you are a growth pm or you’re a growth marketer, you’re supposed to drive growth.” And when that growth does not happen, here comes the axe and people off they go and the recycle and cycle starts all over in order to populate those positions. I think that there’s just a lot of misinformation I would say probably out there in terms of what growth actually is and how it should be done in the companies. And today I just want to cover some of the biggest ones that I see as a patterns as I’m advising companies, as I’m operating in companies because it’s just so blatant yet there’s very few pieces of information on this for people to learn from.
The Right Way to Study Competitors
Lenny Rachitsky: Amazing. What’s number one?
Your Growth Problem Isn’t Unique
Elena Verna: Number one, I have to start with hiring. There’s lots of positions open all the time. There’s so many from head of growth to growth PM there’s a lot of rotation, as I said that is happening in the field. Very few growth people actually stay in the job for over a year or two years. There’s a lot of constant churn and constant rehiring. And when you doing hiring, there’s a lot of mistakes that are actually happening in hiring that I just want to start off on the list. It’s not a roadmap item, but oh my gosh, there’s just so much fault that is happening here. And I did write about it on your blog of hiring for growth. There’s a little bit of a reference to that and one of the biggest latent issues that I see is hiring too soon for growth.
We live in tech, there’s always lots of startups. Startups are obviously looking to grow and there is a huge misconception in the shield that in order to get growth going, you need a growth team, absolutely not true. In order to get the growth going in the company, a founder and the founding team have to figure out how to make it grow to the first, let’s say a million, 5 million, 10 million in ARR. Some of the companies don’t even create growth teams until they’re a hundred, 200 million in ARR because to figure out your product market fit and how to distribute it’s not something that you can outsource to somebody. It’s not somebody that with a shiny resume can come over and all of a sudden wave a magic wand and all of a sudden you have viral campaigns and a bunch of signups coming through and everybody’s paying and everybody’s retaining.
That just doesn’t happen. I see that mistake happening a lot. I really believe that the founder led growth is not being popularized enough that you do not need growth teams until you actually can start running experiments on your user base, which means that you have volume of users that you can learn from and optimize and innovate on, and that first wave of growth has to be founder led.
And there’s two specific reasons that I incur on, which is before you have growth team, before you would think about growth team first you need to have solid PMF, product market fit, means that you have a solution to a problem and you have customers not only coming in and solving that problem with your solution, but they’re also retaining and staying with you. There is a good retention. You can use channel score of how many people would say that they cannot live without your product as well, but there’s some sort of PMF. And then number two, you have data growth cannot function without data. If you have 10 users or 10 customers, that’s not data, that’s a G-sheet with your customers and you don’t need a growth team for that. Until you have data that you can actually do an analysis and you can create hypotheses on and you can start applying experimentation, don’t even think about growth team.
Lenny Rachitsky: Just to summarize a few of the things you just said, just for folks, you basically have seen startups look for a head of growth to join and solve their growth problem and your insight there is just almost always that is not going to be the solution to your problem until you have strong retention already, have a really high score on the channel score if don’t have a ton of data yet and party advice is just the founder should continue to do this for as long as possible. A million ARR is one milestone a lot of people recommend. To your point, a lot of companies wait lot longer.
From Building Communities to Seeking Help
Elena Verna: Yes. And honestly, the longer you wait, the better it is because that way your entire company will be trained to be responsible for growth as opposed to putting this one island with a growth team and saying, “They’re going to be growing,” and what is the rest of the company doing? Honestly, the longer you wait, the better.
Summary of the First Five Tactics
Lenny Rachitsky: As you talk about this, sales is a part of what you described here, like hiring your first sales person. And I guess how do you think about your first head of growth versus salesperson? Is there anything advice there is? Like for B2B SaaS, you probably don’t hire head of growth for even longer, you hire sales first or what’s your advice?
Elena Verna: It depends on how you’re actually going to collect the monies. If your money collection is going to happen through sales team primarily, then you absolutely should be hiring sales way before growth. In fact, in the sales led companies, growth teams are not necessarily needed even that much. You might have a growth marketing team, which is really a demand gen team that is rebranded for growth marketing so they can charge you 20 to 30% more in their salaries, but at the end of the day, sales is doing your monetization. They are doing your activation, they are doing your retention and success efforts. For sales like companies, yeah, higher sales, absolutely. Unless you’re starting to do self-serve revenue.
You’re trying to have product sell itself through potentially freemium acquisition, trial acquisition or you actually having product led activation, monetization, that’s when you would need a growth person. If you’re starting with self-serve monetization, growth hire should be frankly first before sales. Your sales are going to be more opportunistic in nature versus if you sales led company, go ahead, hire sales, wait for growth until you are ready to overlay product-led growth on top of your sales motion.
Tactic 6: Growth Teams Shouldn’t Own Paid Channels
Lenny Rachitsky: That’s an excellent clarification. Basically what I’m hearing, the advice is hire your ahead of growth only when you have clear product market fit and you’re a product-led company and beyond a millionaire ARR ideally something like that.
The Power of Owned and Earned Channels
Elena Verna: Right. And I won’t say you’re product-led company. You are relying on product-led motion to resolve a lot of the growth levers within you because you don’t have to be fully product-led company. But if product, let’s say acquires people, let’s say with the SEO or SEM, and then its product is meant to activate them and then sales closes them, sales would be obviously important as well, but growth would have to come in a little bit sooner as well. If you have any product-led components where product is responsible for acquisition, activation, monetization or retention, that’s where growth comes in.
Lenny Rachitsky: We talked deeply about that specific topic in our first conversation, just for folks, want to go deeper there. There’s lot there.
The Importance of Channel Diversification
Elena Verna: I need to bring it back. This is keeps happening.
Lenny Rachitsky: I love that.
The Evolution of Growth Models
Elena Verna: I need to repeat it. You need to repeat it three times right before it sticks to people. Hopefully this is the third time.
Lenny Rachitsky: Absolutely. I’m only saying that because people may be wanting more of what you’re describing and I will point them to our first episode, which gives deep on that one topic.
Continuously Stacking Your Growth Models
Elena Verna: Amazing.
Every Growth Model Has a Key Lever
Lenny Rachitsky: Excellent. Anything else before we move on to number two?
Elena Verna: No, let’s move on to number two.
Specific Growth Loops and Channel Advice
Lenny Rachitsky: Let’s do it.
Tactic 8: Hiring External Growth Consultants
Elena Verna: Number two, this is on the other side on the matured company where I see a trend over and over, and it’s becoming even more prominent right now of when companies growth slows down, which inevitably happens for a lot of businesses, it happens for a variety of reasons. We’re not going to go into the reasons as to why growth can be slowing down and then they hire a shiny growth head to fix the problem, to basically saying, “Our business is slowing down. We are on the decline. We’re going to bring this person, or we’re going to put this team together and our growth is going to accelerate.” That just does not happen. If you have the overall business slowing down, your head of growth is destined to fail because the reason business is slowing down is much deeper than not having a growth team.
Growth team can optimize, growth can maybe lift it by 10, 15%. Maybe that’s enough for you. Even that is on the upper end of what growth team will be able to do if there is a slow-down trajectory. But what’s important is that if you have core product and core marketing issues, growth team will not be able to fix them for you. You’re going to have to address the big elephant in the room as to why business is slowing down in the first place as opposed to just plopping a growth team on the issue and expecting them to do miracles while the rest of the business continues chugging on the same trajectory that caused the slowdown in the first place.
Lenny Rachitsky: Wow, I’ve never heard this point before and it’s such an important one and it’s very related to your first point. Growth isn’t going to build a product people want, they will help you grow it
Tactic 9: The Risks of Over-Experimentation
Elena Verna: Exactly.
Lenny Rachitsky: If your business is slowing, your product market fit basically might be disappearing and growth isn’t solving that problem.
Rapid Fire: What Isn’t Worth Your Time
Elena Verna: Disappearing, it may be degrading, it may be being eaten by a competitor because there’s somebody that is stomping on your territory. The point is growth can amplify great product market fit and growth can help you grow faster once you are already growing. But if you are slowing down and you have issues with either your go-to-market strategy or your core product strategy with your core product market fit, growth is going to be absolutely helpless to do anything. And it’s honestly, it’s a huge waste of money because at those size of the companies, you would make fairly large growth teams in order to tackle every single product flow and interface that is already out there and invented.
It’s a huge expense. ROI on it, maybe at least one to one. What you put into it, you might get that much out of it, but it’s not going to be enough to create a J curve of the reacceleration by just relying on growth team. I think it’s just like this is where the name growth team plays against it because, “We’re looking for growth. Do you have a growth team?” No. I don’t have a better idea by the way how to name it, but this is where I think it’s misunderstood that there’s the silver bullet of a perfect head of growth, perfect growth team that can reverse the trajectory of the business.
Lenny Rachitsky: Then for folks that are thinking about, “Wow, maybe I should be hiring head of growth,” when should you hire head of growth? When you’re an established company,
Favorite Growth Frameworks
Elena Verna: If you are declining in your revenue growth or whatever other metric that you’re looking at, your weekly active users or whatnot, see at least that you’re able to plateau it so you can stop the decline. There is already a visible trajectory that your core product and your core marketing teams are able to at least reverse the degradation of the metrics. Ideally, you would even start to see some immediate signs of life that there is potential in the business, in the pockets, and then you can put growth into it to really blow it up to the full extent. But if you are on a decline, just don’t do it because there’s going to be very disappointing results in the year or so.
Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. Great one, let’s move on. Number three.
Full-Time Work Isn’t the Best Monetization Strategy
Elena Verna: Number three, this is my favorite, and it might be a little spicy because if there’s any marketers listening out here, but doing rebrand more specifically, homepage redesign to drive growth. This is what hurts me so much and I’ve lived through so many of these and never ever once have I seen a rebrand or redesign, especially a UK marketing site, produce good performance results. Now, there’s many reasons as to why you might want to do a rebrand, why you might want to design your marketing site because you’re trying to enter a new market, new category, your product has evolved and you need to do a full update. But those are almost like it’s a logging indicator that something needs to change and you’re changing it and then you know that you’re going to have to optimize the hell out of it in order to actually bring it even to the previous performance results.
It’s like a stepping stone back, but there is a much bigger room for upside that you can get to, but you are going to have to work to get to that upside. But yet so many companies, there’s a story that happens all the time. I hire a new CMO, new CMO comes in, they’re like, “What’s inside my house here? My house is not designed to my liking. Let me repaint these walls. I want this shade of blue. Let me put the couches over here.” And they start almost designing their website or designing the brand as if it was reflection of their personal taste. And oftentimes it’s promised with our acquisition is going to go up, our category penetration is going to go up, our education or awareness is going to go up.
And it never materializes into anything meaningful because again, if you’re doing it as a step towards unlocking new global maxima, sure, I love that. Do it. Go after it. Know that you have a ton of work ahead of you in order to actually unlock that global maxima. But to ever promise a homepage redesign or marketing site redesign in order to drive more acquisition is a failed promise that is going to be led by lots of agency money spending, often a million dollars plus, lots of arguing about which shade of blue your brand color is going to be, and eight to 10 months at the minimum of development and very lackluster results afterwards.
Maintaining Your Career Optionality
Lenny Rachitsky: Oh man, I’m loving this list already. This is great. To your point, it may still be worth doing if you’re coming into it eyes wide open, this isn’t going to drive growth, but we’re setting ourselves up for a future brand that’s world-class and we know our current brand stinks and our homepage needs to be refreshed. If you’re aware, it’s not going to drive growth, it might be okay.
Elena Verna: Every single time I’ve seen a marketing site at least rebrand, it’s been a step back in performance that then is being treated as a fire drill to fix. Just don’t do it if you expect immediate results out of it, or at least educate the team on how long it’s going to take to get to the point where you think that there’s going to be upside away from your original brand.
Quick Lightning Round Questions
Lenny Rachitsky: I’ve experienced this not just with marketing sites, but most redesigns. Redesign of the product.
Elena Verna: Product redesign. How much product and engineering work comes into just changing a logo in your product or changing colors? It’s insane. With no results ever, there’s no results.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Lenny Rachitsky: And to your point, it’s like, “We’ve spent six months redoing onboarding. Everything we’ve built builds on this new design and experience, we can’t not launch it. Every team is working on this new world, we’re just going to launch it and then we’re going to claw back. We’re going to figure out how to get it back.” That’s how it goes.
Elena Verna: It’s a new starting point and that starting point is going to be much lower than your current optimized experience that you have. Whether it’s well optimized or not optimized, it doesn’t matter. It’s gone through some level of optimization versus rebrand is always a shot in the dark. It might be prettier, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to perform well. Obviously never say never. Sometimes it might work, and if it worked for you, I am so glad. But that’s an outlier and don’t treat it as a pattern.
Lenny Rachitsky: And I was just going to say, I think everyone listening to this that is working on something like this is probably thinking, “No, I think we have a good shot at this.”
… is working on something like this is probably thinking, “No, I think we have a good shot at this. We’ve really thought deeply about this and it might actually be really positive.” In your experience, it sounds like you’ve seen it work occasionally, or is it just never?
Elena Verna: The best I’ve ever seen is that it produced net neutral results and it produced us better ability to optimize towards something bigger. That’s the best case scenario. So if you’re working on it, my biggest advice is not to say you stop. Just understand that the goal here is not to drive at launch, in the seven-day readout after launch, some increased performance.
The goal here should be, we will launch, we will probably see a hit, model out and forecast for a hit, and then give yourself two to three months at the minimum, ideally more like six months, to really optimize it back to a good standing where it can potentially outperform. But you need to bake in that three to six months of work after the launch, which is what a lot of companies and teams forget to do because they just move on. Because it’s like big initiative, big pop, and off we go to our next project.
Lenny Rachitsky: I love that we’re only at number three. This is amazing. Let’s do number four.
Elena Verna: Okay. Number four is obsessing over your competition. Okay, so there’s a little bit of a gotcha here. I tear down companies all the time. I have thousands of Gmail accounts that I sign up for any and every product. I go through their entire experience. I look at their monetization strategies. I look at their activation. I do it across direct competition of the company that I’m working with as well. I want to know what I’m playing against.
So knowing what your competition is doing is extremely important. Being inspired by some aspects of what your competition is doing in their experience is a wonderful place to originate an ideation or potentially try to implement into your product as well. But blatantly saying, “Hey, we’re going to copy all of these best tactics or all of these flows because, hey, they’re doing better than us. Let’s just rip them and do exactly the same. Why isn’t our onboarding looks the same as this onboarding? This company is so successful.”
That’s where things really go wrong because every single experience is very unique to their customer, to their channel. You don’t even know if you’re getting their actual experience or you use some tester cell or you’re getting some personalized thing based on where you signed up from, who you said that you are. So you don’t even know what actually the overall thing looks like most of the time and putting that into your product, it just leads to very subpar results. And there’s a lot of drive, especially to have it as a shortcut. “Okay, we don’t want to go through this ideation or user research. We don’t want to do user interviews, but we don’t want to do A/B testing. It works for them. It must work for us. Let’s just go and do it.” And it fails 95% of the time.
Now, there are certain pieces that I would rightly recommend. I already said inspiration. I use it for inspiration all the time. I’m like, “Okay, what’s cool? What is everybody doing?” So because I want to just stay in the know on what other people are implementing and hopefully if it’s in the control experience, it works and it worked better. I use web archives a ton for locked out pages too. I’m like, okay, how did it look last year? Why does their whole page look this way, or the pricing page? And I analyze that and I try to extrapolate some results.
I also think that there is a lot of patterns you start to notice as you start tearing down all of these companies. You’re like, “Oh, these elements are always the same.” That means all of these companies are arriving to these things and they seem to be winning elements. And you can take those elements and put them into your product, but you can never skip the ideation, the design, the user research, the customer interview, the experimentation step.
And you should always balance it with actually innovating yourself in your product. Because copying competition is like the fastest way to mediocrity because you’ll never be a leader if you copied somebody else. Leader is by default is somebody that is able to separate themselves from the pack in something else. And if you are trying to just be, I don’t know who is ever trying to be the mediocre middle of the pack, but maybe it’s a good starting point, but never the end goal.
The only other thing that I’ll say before I’ll stop talking is benchmarks. Benchmarks are also very dangerous here to use because benchmarks are usually done on all of the competition, on all of the softwares out there. And the way people define numbers is so different from company to company. Even if you look as something as simple as signups. Okay, how many signups should you be on average getting? Or your conversion from prospecting visitor to a signup? Or from a signup to activated user? It’s so depends on how do you define prospect visitor? Some companies define it as all traffic. Some define it as new traffic. Some of them define it on the new IP address, new persistent id. How Google analytics defines it. How Amplitude defines it.
So all of these definitions are so different. So taking also any benchmark that is derived from competition and saying, “This is where we should be,” is also so dangerous because it might not even be applicable depending on how you define the metric. And one of the things that all of those benchmarking data fails is to actually look at specific definitions. And that’s not to say that benchmarks are not extremely valuable data point in your decision making because it’s an input that you should leverage to say what it could be possible. But to just blindly it and set it is just a sure way to fail any of your initiatives and efforts.
Lenny Rachitsky: You’re telling me that there’s no shortcuts?
Elena Verna: I wish there were. I mean, I’ve been doing this for over 15 years. If there were any shortcuts, I’d be all over them. There are patterns and there are frameworks, but there’s no shortcuts.
Lenny Rachitsky: So people hearing this, they’re like, “Okay, don’t copy the competition. Use it for inspiration.” It’s a little hard to know exactly the line between those two. Is there an example that you can think of where you took really interesting inspiration from someone and it worked for a company you’re working with? Or you copied someone and it’s just like, “Oh, that failed. That was a bad idea.”
Elena Verna: I use competition to understand the general framework of how people collect some information or resolve certain steps. So, for example, a sharing model so many products like, “Hey, can you share this with somebody?” Well, you can go and spend so much time of figuring out how it should look. Or you can go to Slack, you can go to Figma, you can go to Nero, you can go to Notion. Like, okay, Google, how are they doing sharing model? You can look at all of that and say, “Okay, here’s all of the common elements that all of them have. Here’s the pieces that I think will apply to my product. Here’s things that do not, and here’s what I can derive from it.”
I use it as an input into ideation, but I never use it as a destination for the result, if that makes sense. Because it’s very helpful to not start from scratch. The empty start problem is real and competition is a wonderful way to not have that and to have input into it, but never to just say, “Oh, we can skip the design cycle off we go,” or, “Just slap our colors on it. If it works for them, it’s going to work for us.” So I have extensive Nero boards with everybody’s onboarding flows, with everybody’s pricing pages, their sharing model, their invite colleagues models that I reference all the time.
But they’ve never been the exact thing that I would use for any company as opposed to say, “Hey, I think this is a great starting point for you. Here are the things that I think will work very well for your company and for your product and take these elements. The rest you need to go and do themselves, so at least that way there’s a starting point.”
And this is why I also started doing a lot more of my own, almost, prototypes, like skeletons of here’s the elements that you should do in these flows. I have one for pricing page, I have one for homepage, but you need to put in your own [inaudible 00:32:36] into it, in order for it to actually work.
Lenny Rachitsky: What made me realize this back in the day was thinking at Airbnb, especially, thinking about people looking at our flow and being like, they’ve got it all figured out. We’re just going to copy what they’ve done, so thoughtful and have tested everything. And knowing how that has not happened and how so much of this was guesswork and we hate so much of it. Just thinking about people trying to copy this thinking we know what we’re doing. It’s like, “What are you guys even thinking?”
Elena Verna: Oh my God, I actually had that happen to me. At Dropbox not so long ago, somebody reached out and they’re like, “Oh, I looked.” It was like some page on activation flow and they’re like, “Oh, I love this page. This is so cool. I love what you’ve done here. I’m going to go take it to my company.” I’m like, “We haven’t touched it in 10 years. This page is only visible for small cohort of people. Please don’t do it. Please don’t copy it. It performs like shit. I know it’s out there, but it’s not meant to be out there. Nobody thoughtfully put it out there.” So that’s definitely a huge failure point that you can run into.
Lenny Rachitsky: Right, if it’s like a fancy company, assume they’re just so smart and diligent about every little pixel and decision.
Elena Verna: If people only knew of how much craziness is happening in those big companies and how much chaos there is.
Lenny Rachitsky: Oh man, that’s a whole other podcast episode.
Elena Verna: Whole other podcasts, yes.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay, number five.
Elena Verna: Okay, I have this one. It’s a little bit Meta, but I see it happening all the time. We love to think that our problems are unique. I’m working in this company and we have this gross problem and we need to go and figure out the solution from the grounds up. Maybe this is a little bit related to the competition point, but I’m very sorry to break it to all of you, but your problem is not unique. I am 99% sure of that. Your problem has been felt by somebody somewhere in probably many, many places and you trying to re-engineer solution is time lost to market and has a huge opportunity cost.
So my biggest thing that I try to get people is don’t think that you have unique problems. You don’t. I know we love to. It’d be fun to have something unique to learn, but with so many startups, with so many people in our industry, in your industry, whichever industry that is, your problem has been solved by somebody. Or at least that there’s a lot of failures on the problem that you should be learning from. And number one thing that whenever you have an initiative or whenever you have a metric that you need to go and move, to not start from scratch, ever. Do not start from scratch. It’s the worst thing that you can do because you can waste so many cycles on trying to do something that probably has already been solved, which means how do you approach this as a result?
Well, you can look at competition and how they’re solving the problem. That’s one input, for sure. You should go find people that have solved this problem because there are people there and people love to talk about what they do. So take advantage of that human psychology and go find those people and just ask them, “How did you do it? What did you do? What happened?” Obviously, not all the time everybody’s going to respond, but we have LinkedIn, we have X. Go out there, find the people that you think or ask around in your network of who you think might have similar solutions and just go talk to people. It would be incredible shortcut if you’re talking about an actual hack that is a hack to get to an optimal solution.
And then the last thing that I would also say is that solving any one problem uniquely is extremely inefficient. We are evolving so fast in our market, you need to be able to patternize your solutions. Patternize, is that a word?
Lenny Rachitsky: Let’s make it a word.
Elena Verna: Make patterns. Make patterns out of your solutions. So more you can stop looking at as a unique data point or unique problem and more as there is, I need to fit it into existing pattern or I need to figure out the framework on how to solve not only this problem but other problems. The faster you’ll be able to get at least to like 60% of the solution there. And then you can do very authentic implementation of whatever you want to do. But to go from zero to 60 manually, as a one-off, we do not have time in the industry right now to do it, unless you want to be left behind.
Lenny Rachitsky: Bam. Powerful words. Is there an example that comes to mind of you doing this either the wrong way of just thinking this was unique and realizing I should have talked to people, or where you actually realized something was not unique?
Elena Verna: I’ll give you actually an example that I had when I was at Nero. At Nero, we were first trying to stand up community, and I was tasked to do it, and I’ve never done it before. So I was banging my head around against the wall and I’m like, “Okay, how do I do it? What software do we use? Where do we acquire users? What kind of content is going to go in there?”
So I was approaching it almost like a finding product market fit, and I will fail so much doing it. And I honestly only have a year to get to some sort of traction before this is going to get shut down because company is impatient, company is moving fast. So if this is going to be a failure point, it’s either going to be taken away from me, which is fair, or we is going to close the door on it, which would be a huge failure both on my point and for company as a whole.
So I went and I started talking to a bunch of people that have done communities, and I remember talking to Caroline from Atlassian who has stood up community. I actually hired her as an advisor afterwards and she’s like, “Well, are you talking about a user community or an agency community or a partner community?” And I’m like, my mind was blown. I’m like, “I even considering all of these angles because I was just literally thinking about users only.” And she’s like, “Well, you shouldn’t necessarily start with the user community. If you want some results out of it, go to agency or partner communities first.” She would applying it to me in a structural way for me to grasp my head around it and then implement something that had much better results at the end that I wouldn’t even gotten to probably until six, eight months later, if I didn’t talk to her.
So I think it has to come with a place of knowing that you don’t know everything and humility to say, “Hey, I need help,” and I might have a already fancy title. At that point, I was an interim CMO at Nero and I’m like, “I don’t know how to do this.” And it actually earns you a lot more credit than you think. And a lot of people are afraid to admit that they don’t know how to solve a problem and that’s why they start from scratch. But you need to really put your ego aside and get some help faster than trying to hit every single failure point along the way.
Lenny Rachitsky: And the thing that’ll really hurt your ego is failing. And so the more you could do to avoid failing and being successful with this initiative by talking to people, doing research.
Elena Verna: And to be fair, failure is going to be unavoidable. If you talk about growth, growth is about failure. My big motto, life motto on growth is that you have to fail to learn. You can’t just constantly succeed. Success is an output of a lot of failures, but the question is, how much time do you have to fail? And a lot of times we don’t realize how many failure cycles we’re going to have to go through before we get a success, and that company, or even market, has no time for that. So still expect to fail, sure, but the timeline for failures is going to be shortened quite a bit.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay, so we’ve gone halfway through your list. There’s 10 items on this list, right?
Elena Verna: Yes, yes. There’s 10 items. Next one is a good one.
Lenny Rachitsky: I’m excited to chat with Christina Gilbert, the founder of OneSchema, one of our longtime podcast sponsors. Hi, Christina.
Christina Gilbert: Yes. Thank you for having me on, Lenny.
Lenny Rachitsky: What is the latest with OneSchema? I know you now work with some of my favorite companies like Ramp, Vanta, Scale, and Watershed. I heard that you just launched a new product to help product teams import CSVs from especially tricky systems like ERPs.
Christina Gilbert: Yes, so we just launched OneSchema file feeds, which allows you to build an integration with any system in 15 minutes as long as you can export a CSV to an SFTP folder. We see our customers all the time getting stuck with hacks and workarounds and the product teams that we work with don’t have to turn down prospects because their systems are too hard to integrate with. We allow our customers to offer thousands of integrations without involving their engineering team at all.
Lenny Rachitsky: I can tell you that if team had to build integrations like this, how nice would it be to be able to take this off my roadmap and instead use something like OneSchema and not just to build it, but also to maintain it forever?
Christina Gilbert: Absolutely, Lenny. We’ve heard so many horror stories of multi-day outages from even just a handful of ad records. We are laser-focused on integration reliability to help teams end all of those distractions that come up with integrations. We have a built-in validation layer that stops any bad data from entering your system, and OneSchema will notify your team immediately of any data that looks incorrect.
Lenny Rachitsky: I know that importing incorrect data can cause all kinds of pain for your customers and quickly lose their trust. Christina, thank you for joining us and if you want to learn more, head on over to oneschema.co. That’s oneschema.co.
Let me summarize the first five real quick and then we’ll keep going. So the first is, wait longer than you think to hire a head of growth. Wait until you have product market fit, maybe a million, or especially if you’re self-serve oriented.
Number two is if your growth is declining, the head of growth won’t solve that problem. First, stop the decline at least. Third is redesigning your homepage, marketing page. Rebranding is not only not going to help you grow, it’s going to probably hurt growth and slow things down. And so just go into that wide eyes wide open.
Four is don’t just copy the competition and assume they know what they’re doing and assume that what they do is going to work for you. Use it as inspiration. On the other hand, look at get inspiration from experts, competition, trends, things like that to help you solve your problem, which you think is no one solved before. It turns out every problem you’re solving someone has solved in some way, most likely.
Elena Verna: Yes, especially in growth. I mean, I know this can apply to a lot of product management and to marketing as well, but in growth, when you’re talking about how do I lift activation or have a really big drop off between activation and monetization? These things are a lot more patternized than you would expect them to be, so go and find those patterns as opposed to trying to re-engineer it.
Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. Okay, let’s keep going. Number six.
Elena Verna: So next one. Next one is a little spicy one too, and that is part of growth you owning some channels. A lot of growth teams own acquisition. So owning channels and growth prioritizing SEO, SEM, social, is one of the biggest mistakes I think a growth team can do. Now, obviously, I’m not saying don’t do SEO, or don’t do SEM, so organic search or paid search. I’m not saying that. However, as a growth team, your number one priority is to create your own or your earned channel. So channel that you’ve earned and that nobody else can compete in but you.
What do I mean by that? When you’re doing organic search or paid search, you’re making Google richer. Great for Google. Google is an incredible company, but by dumping money into paid marketing, you are paying them and you’re paying for their distribution and access to their distribution. If you’re doing social too, like you’re doing, let’s say, Instagram or whatnot, paid advertising in Instagram, that’s great, but all of that works on algorithm. An algorithm can giveth, but algorithm can also taketh away at any point. And you have no control because you don’t own those channels. You are playing with other players and you’re competing against them in somebody else’s channel.
Now, on the other side, there can be your own earned channel. What is earned channel? It really goes into the concept of product-led growth acquisition, which means you’re relying on virality, on word of mouth, on user-generated content in order to attract new acquisition through top of the funnel. So why is that earned and why do I put that above, let’s say organic search, which is SEO, obviously, is wonderful? But again, search just goes to Google. That’s great. Versus if you build your own user-generated content in your own community, nobody else can compete with you in that. That is yours. Your competitors cannot buy their eyeballs. Their people are going to be attracting other people.
Referrals from people to people are everything. So, Lenny, if I, let’s say I sign up for, say, Superhuman and I invite you into it. That is much stronger acquisition tactic versus you looking for and finding Superhuman, let’s say on paid marketing advertisements. And especially with our age right now where search as an interface is changing towards AI interface and the AI interface is giving a lot less credit to all of the content. Content is almost becoming a database and there’s a new UI that is being developed on it. Before it was Google was the UI, and now AI is coming in with a new UI, and there’s not as much control that you have over this new UI that is being developed.
Focusing on these earned channels that you own becomes the outmost priority. And if you don’t have them on your growth roadmap, you are going to be in some really big trouble over the next year to two years because your cost of acquisition is only going to go up. Your competition and those channel is only going to go up. You’re constantly going to be praying to algorithm Gods to giveth your way, but again, they can taketh at any point. And it’s really one of those fundamental growth team failure points if they don’t spend enough time on virality and user generated content to create their own earned acquisition.
Lenny Rachitsky: Wow. Okay. This is incredible. This is its own podcast episode in theory that we could do of how to actually do this. We’re not going to cover the strategy. Also, this may not necessarily work for every company. Your point is, you can grow other ways, but this is by far …
Your point is you can grow other ways, but this is by far the most powerful, most effective, cheapest, most likely to succeed. If you can figure this out.
Elena Verna: It’s not cheapest. It’s actually cost a lot of product and engineering and even marketing resources to stand up. So it’s not the cost of a budget, but it’s cost of people that will have to work to create your own channel, so to speak, for acquisition. And you’re right, maybe that’s not for everybody, but it’s actually applicable to more products than people realize. Because, every single product has some sort of team functionality, some sort of roles that they need to do. Every product can drive word of mouth loop… Well, actually, that’s not true. Not every product can drive word of mouth loop, but they can drive recommendations and they can create user generated content.
One of those tactics usually applies to at least one product. So there is an opportunity to create some sort of earned channel, even though it might feel unnatural at the beginning depending on how you reach PMF and how you’ve scaled in the first couple of stages of it. But if you are not exploring it and if you are not investing into it or at least trying and failing within it, I think that you are really leaving too much of your growth future into the hands of somebody else that you have low control over.
Lenny Rachitsky: So the advice here is your growth team. It’s okay if they work on SEM, pay growth basically and SEO, but most of your effort and investment should be in earned channel, owned channels, specifically virality generated content?
Elena Verna: Diversify. Just diversify your strategy. So not all of it is reliant on somebody else giving you access to their distribution. Now, for example, a Dropbox, over 50% of acquisition comes through sharing. So I load something into my Dropbox, maybe I need to send it out for signature. Maybe I need to just share this file to transfer it to somebody. Maybe I just need to share this file as a final delivery to my clients that I was working with. Well, that recipient then is now aware of Dropbox, so it solved the brand awareness.
By that action of sharing, you actually almost activated that recipient too, so you don’t need to educate them anymore on how the product works and whatnot. And the percentage of those recipients sign up to become Dropbox users, and that accounts for 50% of acquisition. That is a stable earned channel that nobody can compete with, and it’s only for Dropbox to lose, so to speak. And we actually had our own growth pod focused on it. Because to optimize both sender experience and the recipient experience, because it was such a powerful growth and growth engine that driven the company, and every business should have an attempt at one of these.
Lenny Rachitsky: I think this is going to be a really good push for a lot of growth teams to think about what could we do here? Number seven. Four to go
Elena Verna: Number seven. We’ve talked about this at least a little bit in our last podcast too. But I see this as a question that comes up all the time and something that people are afraid of to invest, which is a mistake. Every single company starts with their growth efforts focused either on product-led growth. Hey, I’m going to have everything being done self-serve or on sales in marketing. I’m going to have sales team and then I’m going to have marketing team and they’re going to do all of the work and my product is just going to create the functionality. And that’s good and fine for a while depending on how long that while is. But not overlaying every single way that you can grow through product, through marketing and through sales as an evolution. Is a huge mistake that a lot of growth teams fail to iterate on and innovate on.
The way that I best be comparing it is if product has a product-market fit, which is great, that product-market fit is not going to last that product forever. They’re always going to have to have a second horizon. They’re always going to have to have a product-market fit expansion efforts in order to continue to grab as many people and solve as many people’s problems as possible and increasing their team. Well, the same comes with growth. If you have a growth model that works for you, that’s wonderful, good for you. Optimize it, grow it, scale it, create a team that will be nurturing it and that will be amplifying it, but you’re going to need to evolve it, and that evolution needs to come through overlaying other growth models on top of it. So, A, you are diversified away from just one growth model failing, because a lot of times you’re going to get into a situation of law.
I love Andrew Chen’s article here. It’s called a Law of Shitty Clickthroughs. Where if you over-optimize the same thing over and over again, it has minimal returns, and some growth models have very limited time spans. Some of them are huge, some can grow for sharing loop at Dropbox. It’s 17 years in the making and it’s still firing. Good for it. That’s amazing. But that’s very much an anomaly. Most of growth loops spin out their ability to produce meaningful results for you within the first five to six to seven years.
So continuously overlaying those different growth models, and what I’m specifically talking about is product-led growth, marketing- led growth, sales-led growth, and introducing it into this ecosystem constantly is what really separates companies that can continue growing for a long periods of times versus the ones that can see a really big blip, potentially even unicorn type of growth rates of 70, 80, whatever plus percent, and then it starts to slow down. And don’t wait until that slowdown happens. You need to really start thinking about different ways that you can attract people to grow so you are not leaving a gap in the market that somebody else can enter and own. As opposed to you playing in every way in where you can interact with your customer.
Lenny Rachitsky: The way I think about this is the S-curves of every growth model and growth lever, right? Eventually it’ll help and then slow down and see you want to find the next S-curve on things that’ll grow your business.
Elena Verna: Yes, absolutely. The way that I see it often is that especially when growth teams, they hit a really big result out of some initiative, they just keep trying to focus on that over and over again. And sometimes that focus is warranted. Like I said, our sharing loop at Dropbox has its own growth team against it. Great, but at the same time, a lot that’s not warranted for all of the… Or you need to realize that there’s not more choose to squeeze out of this thing and then you need to go and you need to move on.
Which actually brings me to a little bit of a next thing too, is you need to do it every 18 months. Because a lot of them are going to fail. And every five years or so, you for sure need new channel, new growth loops, new tactics, new engines so to speak, to power your growth engine. Whether it’s overlaying sales on top of self-serve, whether you’re doing a lot of, let’s say virality right now in terms of acquisition and you’re going into marketing a lot heavier. But every five years something big has to start taking a big portion of your volume. And for that every 18 years you need to introduce something-
Lenny Rachitsky: 18 months.
Elena Verna: Sorry. Yeah. Every 18 months you need to introduce something new in order for it to continue evolving.
Lenny Rachitsky: And was that number eight of the list we’re going through or that’s like a bonus piece of advice?
Elena Verna: No, that’s just a bonus piece of advice.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay, cool. Okay, got it. And so the advice here essentially is you’ll find something that is helping you grow, assume that will slow down at some point, start thinking about other levers and growth models to layer on top of that.
Elena Verna: Yeah.
Lenny Rachitsky: Something I’ve seen, let me know if you agree, is usually there’s going to be one lever that has most of your growth for a long, long time, and so all other things are not going to be as big, but they are still important.
Elena Verna: So the way I think about it is I try to focus 20 to 25% of growth teams time annually. Not every given sprint or not every given quarter, but annually to introduce a new growth loop, or to introduce a new channel, or to introduce something new that can potentially bring us additional umpth to our growth engine. I know that a lot of it is going to fail. None of it is gold on any growth metrics because you cannot goal it immediately, let’s say on monetization or immediately acquisition. You’re just going to cut it at its knees immediately if you’re not going to let it evolve into something that can be monetized, that can be responsible for acquisition. So example on Mirrorverse, which is a user-generated content library of all of the mirror boards that people create, it took us probably 18 months until we started putting metrics expectations on it.
Before that, it was a thing that we were testing. And it was being used by a lot of people, but we’re like, we don’t even know exactly quite how this is going to fit all together. And then it started taking off as both engagement engine as well as acquisition engine. But it’s important to constantly give your team room to try those new ideas. Otherwise, you’re going to find yourself that your growth loops and your growth engine is slowing down and you don’t have time to find that second horizon. And that is the worst situation to be in. That’s where growth starts to slow down. And to recover out of that is impossible because you need revenue. You need revenue, you need revenue, you need revenue. And these growth loops on average take six months, a year, a year and a half to start producing even visible revenue. So that’s why you need to start layering it very soon into your initiatives.
Lenny Rachitsky: To make this even more concrete for people that are starting to like, oh, shit I got to do this. Can you just give us a list that doesn’t have to be exhaustive of potential growth loops, levers, methods, engines for folks to consider? You’ve mentioned a few, but just give a list of people like, okay, got it. Maybe we’ll try one of these.
Elena Verna: I’m really big on creating a growth loop out of user generated content. I think with everything that is happening with AI and SEO at the moment, your biggest claim to fame on content strategy will be harnessing user generated content. Whether it’s user generated templates, whether it’s user generated case studies, review, whatever it is you need to start investing into it now, creating a library out of it, using it for activation purposes, using it then for acquisition purposes, using community to spark the conversations around it. That can be a really wonderful strategy that everybody should consider of whether there’s juice in it within your product. Other ones can be, hey, we’re a very, let’s say individualistic product, but can we actually create a referral mechanism for it?
For B2C, that’s actually very straightforward. A lot of B2C products thrive on referrals. For B2B, It can be more of invitation of other team members into the product to complete other jobs to be done. Hey, I’ve done this. I need my manager to see it. Can I create a report to share with my manager? And all of a sudden it starts to spread within the company. So creating additional almost product functionality that then creates these loops potentially for you. So it can be a slew of things. Obviously, I would highly recommend just understanding all of the menus of these earned tactics. I should do a blog post on it actually. And then just see what works for you or not. Because at least ideation step a bit has to happen. If especially you’re relying on search engines for your acquisition, start thinking about some of the earned channels as soon as possible.
Lenny Rachitsky: And even though you recommend spend more time on earned channels, owned channels, there’s also explore SEO, explore paid growth, right? Sales?
Elena Verna: Absolutely. I mean, almost everybody that’s paid, arguably almost too soon potentially. There’s a point to make that shouldn’t be. A company should not be doing paid right now, but SEO, social resellers, all of those are wonderful tactics. Obviously, I skew very heavily towards earned channels just because once you stand that up, that’s a gift that just keeps on giving and nobody can take that away from you. But that doesn’t mean that other tactics and other channels should not be explored as well.
Lenny Rachitsky: Amazing. Let’s keep going. So we have three to go. Number eight.
Elena Verna: So number eight, this one’s kind of a doozy and I think a lot of people don’t do it. I don’t know why they don’t do it. I think it’s such an incredible ability to propel forward. And that is, what doesn’t work, as I said in the previous growth tactics, is trying to think that each problem is unique and you need to solve it on your own. Maybe this is not so much does it work, but not hiring advisors is something that I do not recommend for you to do. You can get access to anybody for one hour a week. Yeah, you’ll have to pay them. So nobody’s going to volunteer their hour. We’re all very, very busy. But hiring advisors is the biggest career amplification and your business amplification can possibly do. Because to create a network of people that have all of these data points and those all of the other patterns that you can do is something that can just propel you so far forward.
That doesn’t mean you have to do everything advisor says. That’s not the point. They’re not the strategy setter. But they are additional input into your decision-making that you otherwise wouldn’t have. You can go and hire somebody from Atlassian. You can go and hire somebody from Airbnb that have been and lived through all of this and they can help you solving your problem. So I think any growth team that does not have an advisor is a growth team that is underperforming. Because even me who I’ve advised so many companies, I’ve operated at so many companies, I don’t know everything. Every time I take an operator role, I hire advisors for myself. Because that is the fastest way to learn anything, and I often see these teams that just try to figure out everything on their own and not have any advisors on their boards, so to speak.
I’m not even talking like an official board. I’m talking not even an advisory board. But you can hire somebody as a contractor that will be your advisor, I think is a huge mistake, especially in this day and age. Because we have a big asymmetry of information. In our field, there’s very little available to learn because we’re all very cagey because of competition. But at the end of the day, people know a lot of the stuff and how it worked for them internally, and I highly, highly encourage you to not try to wing it on your own.
Lenny Rachitsky: Along those lines, there’s also advice of just like, don’t worry about advisors. You never know if they’re going to be useful. There’s all these hanger-ons that join your startup and want to help, but they’re not helpful. If you give one tip for a founder or team that’s interviewing advisors, looking for an advisor to vet them to help them find people that are actually great, what would your tip be?
Elena Verna: I have actually a good one. Many advisors might not like it though. I think that you should not hire an advisor until you do some sort of workshop with them on the problem that you’re experiencing. See them in action. See what kind of information they can provide to you, because any advisor that is cagey about what they know is not the type of advisor that you’re going to want to have on your team. You want to have somebody that has lived through it that can talk to you, to your face about it, that is able to have hard conversations. That is able to provide you necessary examples. That is able to give you and connect dots for you for necessary patterns. So instead of just saying, “Oh, this person looks good, let me hire them as an advisor.” Say, “Hey, let’s have a workshop first. I have this problem. I think that you can help me fix it.”
Pay them for it, whatever their rate is for that workshop, for sure. See how they actually interact with your team and then hire them on ongoing retainer bases. Because that creates an interview loop that is very practical, that is very quick to understand whether you can work with them, they can work with you, and whether they have anything to contribute to you. And then every single month evaluate whether that advisor should stay with you. Some advisors, they only need to be with the company for three months and off they go, that’s fine. Some of them might stick with you for four or five years, but every single month you should go and say, did they add any value? I’m not saying that advisors should have any monetary expectations like revenue attribution, so to speak to them. But did you find value in having conversations with them? Did they offer anything valuable to you?
Lenny Rachitsky: That was an awesome tip. And I could see why people would be like, “God damn. Elena, don’t say that.” It makes so much sense. Here we go. Number nine. Here we go.
Elena Verna: My last one is also that I see something way too often nowadays on growth teams specifically. This is very, very gross problem. And that is too much risk averseness on growth, where you’re starting to test everything. If every single one of your initiatives that you’re doing on growth is an experiment, that’s a problem and that is something that you should take a look at and say, what am I doing and why do I need a precise scientific measurement for every single thing that I touch in order for it to go to production or to hit the market?
It’s almost like a disease, like a paralyzing disease, that slows down progress, that slows down velocity, that slows down learnings, that creates very terrible consequences to the output that growth teams produce. And it’s a little bit counterintuitive, because experimentation is a way to do growth for growth teams and it’s their process. Growth teams are meant to experiment, but I also think that experimenting on everything is something that is quite terrible once the team starts to get locked into that state, and it’s really hard to get out of because they’re then afraid to do any change until or unless that they test.
Lenny Rachitsky: So where do you find that balance? I imagine people hearing this are like, oh, yes, this makes sense to me, and then they continue to test basically everything. What’s kind of some heuristics you’d recommend for knowing, okay, just don’t test that. Don’t worry about it. You don’t need credit for that win.
Elena Verna: First of all, I think that people should trust their intuition a little bit more. Data is good, but data is only good if you have enough of it. So if you have low volume real estate, that is going to take you eight months to reach some sort of answer. Do you really want to test it for eight months? What’s the point of it? My rule of thumb, if we cannot collect the sample size in the month, we shouldn’t test it, period. Because it’s just then it’s not fast enough. We should just go and do pre versus post. Pre versus post is pretty powerful. It’s also a way to assess your impact and you can still roll back if it doesn’t work. But don’t think that everything needs a scientific explanation to whether it needs to be moved forward or not.
Also, experimentation cannot be the way that people make decisions in the company. There’s still so much about knowing your user, understanding the market for your brain to connect all of those dots and to know what needs to be an experience that your customers are going to want. That if scientific data, like a very tight determination of the probability that this is a success, it’s important, absolutely do it because it might be a really big strategical pivot that you’re planning to do. So it’s a data point to validate that all of this extra work will be needed. It might be a very high traffic real estate that even 0.1% difference will mean millions of dollars for you.
But other than that, it should be just go, go, go. Do pre versus post. By the way, I’m not saying just release and move on. Release, do seven day, 24 hour readout, seven day readout, 28 day readout, even come back to it a year later and measure some of the retention or extension data that is associated with it.
But to test everything is debilitating to growth teams and app paralyzes them in its place. So kind of look at your initiatives and say, where do I need precision? And it’s important and I can get it best in that versus where we should just go for it. And yeah, we will fail there too, and that’s okay. And we can roll back and we can figure out how to make it better. But failure is going to happen regardless.
In statistics, six is tricky. Many people take it for face value versus it’s just like a directional data point to say there’s likely new distribution that has maybe a different mean, and 5% of the chances. If you measure in 95% statistical significance, you might not even be there, and yet really take it for so granted. Oh, it’s going to drive this much lift. So I just think that people stop in this age of data, almost rely enough on their element intuition.
Lenny Rachitsky: A lot of contrary intakes here. I love this. Elena, we’ve reached number 10. And I know number 10 is like a special one where it’s more than one. Quick. Fire.
Elena Verna: So number 10 is going to be my little fire round. My fire round on little things that I just see people spending way too much time on it. It hurts my heart, because it’s not going to drive any results on them. So number one. Color optimizations. Because the love of God, a blue is a blue is a blue. As long as it’s accessible and as long as it’s bright enough, off you go. You do not need to test the shades of blue or test it against green or so on. Pick a color, move on, please don’t spend time on it. That’s an early 2000s tactic. It doesn’t work anymore. We pass that in technology sector.
Number two. Third party signups. A lot of times we think, oh, we’re going to get so much more acquisition if we add Google Auth or if we add Facebook Auth or Slack Auth or Microsoft Auth, whichever auth you want to add to it. In some cases, it’s very important to have third party auth. So for example, if you are a developer product, please have a GitHub auth. It’s kind of unnecessary. The developers already have the account there, have them connect with it as opposed to create a new one. However, if you’re a productivity product, email is fine for the longest time. Gmail is nice. It’s not going to drive more acquisition for you. You’re just going to do a makeshift, and two more people…
… more acquisition for you. You’re just going to do a makeshift and two more people using it. It’s not going to create incrementality, it’s not going to improve your activation, it’s not going to improve your retention. It’s not a growth tactic. It’s part of you just customer experience that you want to invest into. Number three, on the fire round, one email wonders. We stress too much about this one email that we’re going to send to this one customer group. And we’re like, oh gosh, how much lift is it going to cost? It’ll never cause any lift. You will never work as a one-off email. Too few people open it on average, 25% open rate. At best you’ll get 40 to 50% open rate. Too few people click it. One email will never do anything. If you’re going to go into email, please think about it as a series about communication, about how it interacts with product communication.
It’s a whole strategy. It’s a whole thing. Please don’t stress about one-off email. Never test a change in one email. It’ll never work. You’re going to have to do the whole god damn thing and see how it’s going to do. Not just one email, just never going to work.
Lenny Rachitsky: I’m definitely guilty of this one. That is a really good one for sure. And it’s so obvious in hindsight, so I love that you share that.
Elena Verna: Yes. And then the last one, growth teams are often too obsessed about removing friction. Because if we remove the steps, then more people are going to get to the destination. And to an extent, if you cause horrible friction in your product where it’s just confusing about what the next step is, I agree, go fix the friction of the cognitive load that it takes to complete a step. That is the friction that you should be working on. However, just removing steps or yanking or simplifying things to an oblivion where you lose an identity of what you even do or what you’re capable of doing is a completely failed growth tactic. So simplifying may be an initiative of a different problem that you’re solving, but if you ever have a line item on your roadmap that says simplified onboarding, please cross it out. It’s not going to work because simplifying onboarding is an action.
What is the problem that you’re solving? You’re never trying to solve a problem of simplifying. You always have a problem of people are confused in it, but people don’t know where to go or they get lost in it or they’re not educated enough. That is the problem. And simplifying might be a solution, but it can never be a problem on its own. And too many growth teams are just obsessed with this notion that came out I think in early 2000s, like, oh, simplifying is the biggest growth hack that you can do. Do it. It’s only a solution to a very specific problem set of too much complexity.
Lenny Rachitsky: Wow, that was a big one to end on. That I think will help a lot of people avoid wasting time. Again, a whole other podcast conversation probably focus just on onboarding advice that you probably have, that I know you have. We’ve reached the last item. Is there anything else you want to share about this list before we move on?
Elena Verna: No, I think we’ve spent too much time. We’re ready to go.
Lenny Rachitsky: Not too much. Just enough time. And kind of on a note, I want to call an audible, and so we were going to talk through all of your favorite frameworks. I like the way this conversation has gone. I don’t want people to get overwhelmed with information. So one idea is just list maybe your favorite growth frameworks just for folks to go check these out and not spend too much time on each one.
Elena Verna: Yep, let’s do that.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay.
Elena Verna: Great. So the list of my favorite growth frameworks. And to me framework by the way, it’s not a solution, it’s a pattern. It’s a pattern that exists across almost every single company out there and it’s a starting point for your ideation and to figure out how you can almost shortcut to possible list of solutions as opposed to trying to figure out too hard of how to even define a problem on its own. So number one, it’s probably expected if anybody has read anything or listened to me talk is growth loops. I think anybody who thinks about growth and anybody who thinks about growth in the funnel fashion versus understanding what the growth loops are is missing out on the ability to create sustainable growth engine. So it’s very important to think about action, reaction that generates another action and it’s a self-contained flywheel they can spin. A lot of resources on it at Reforge, Brian Balfour and Casey Winters and Andrew Chen wrote a lot about this.
Highly recommend anybody looking into. My next favorite growth framework’s actually written by you, Lenny, and Dan, which is a race car framework. Everybody has a really hard time often thinking about what are all of them parts of growth initiatives and which are long-term, short-term, how much are they going to actually produce in results? And race car framework is wonderful because it separates different initiatives into, hey, there’s some engines, loops that are just going to keep on spinning. There’s some fuel that you’re going to need to add into it, potentially like paid marketing dollars. There are some turbo boosts that you may have in your race car that are going to be, let’s say big user conferences that you’re going to hold as a product or there’s [inaudible 01:17:22] and optimizations that you’re going to need to do pouring oil into that engine so that actually performs correctly. It’s beautiful. I talk about it all the time with everybody.
The next favorite growth framework for me comes from Bengali and that’s adjacent to user theory. I think that was very powerful in terms of thinking about growth evolution. And as we talked about adding different growth models to your growth ecosystem, different growth loops, but also adjacent users which are outside of your ideal customer profiles or ICP, outside of your core user and how growth team can really bring them in and add additional oomph to your product without even expansion of product market fit by just optimizing their experiences. I’m going to stop at these three because I think those are the most powerful ones.
Lenny Rachitsky: Cool. On that last one, [inaudible 01:18:11] Bengali was on the podcast. We’ll link to that episode if you want to go deeper on the adjacent using user theory. I love how that was a few minutes on things that could change people’s life if they adopt one of these frameworks and learn how to think about growth in this way. It’s such a powerful mental model for thinking about all this stuff you’ve been talking about this entire conversation.
Elena Verna: Yes, those frameworks are like my church in my mind of my system of beliefs of how I think about growth and how I think about it on a strategic level of owning it as a strategy, not just like a tactic or an initiative.
Lenny Rachitsky: The church of Elena Verna. Amazing. Okay, so before we wrap up, I want to bring us over to Contrarian Corner, recurring segment on this podcast where I like to ask the guest if there’s something they believe that most other people don’t believe. Contrarian opinion you might say. Is there anything that comes to mind?
Elena Verna: I do have a very contrarian opinion, although it’s not so much related to growth as opposed to maybe your personal growth and my contrarian opinion is that full-time jobs are not the best way to monetize the skill that you have. It’s one of the packages that everybody should evaluate and take advantage of, but too many people blindly default to that package and don’t explore other options that are both available on the market as well as best suited for their personalities, for their interests, and for their skill set. It’s like a default plan that everybody subscribes to that is faulty in itself.
Lenny Rachitsky: Wow. Okay. Wait, we got to hear more. So what are some other packages? I think we’re buying some of these packages, these other options, but I guess what should people be thinking about when you say this in terms of what can they actually do and explore?
Elena Verna: I’ll premise it to saying I don’t want to rain parade on full-time roles. They’re wonderful on video ability, to learn to get the expertise and depending on which career stage you are at full-time roles might be the absolute necessity for you to move on to and unlock the next level. However, full-time roles boxes into one company that may not be a great fit for us culturally, for our skills, for our ambitions, for our interests. Life is too short for that and ability to really go and figure out your own best monetization model, just like you work on that for your business, you should work for that on yourself without an assumption oftentimes is the only option that you should have.
So what are the other options? There’s so many, obviously the couple known ones. Freelancing, you can be a contractor. I do a lot of advising and consulting because for my brain of how I work and how I like to puzzle solve and pattern match, it works much better to be horizontal across many companies versus vertical on one specific one. But that doesn’t mean I still don’t take those vertical engagements to deepen my knowledge into any specific topic. But overall it’s a lot more interesting for me to pattern match across multiple companies and help them grow as opposed to just focusing on one.
There’s interim engagements where there’s a predetermined end date to your agreement. There’s fractional engagements where you’re working part-time on something as opposed to engulfing yourself completely. There’s other ways to create courses, there’s a way to create newsletters and monetize them like you’re doing such a fantastic job. So there’s just so many options and people are sometimes paralyzed by fear of instability, that it creates when you start to explore other options because you don’t have that contract with that one company that provides you that paycheck every two weeks to rely on. But at the same time you can create diversification for your career and you depend on when you need to pull that trigger and when is the right time for you to explore. But to spend your entire career only assuming full-time is the only way I think is a complete mistake that a lot of people are doing.
Lenny Rachitsky: One of my favorite posts of yours along these lines, which is around increasing… What you want to do is increase optionality and I guess talk about that because I think it’s a really powerful piece of advice.
Elena Verna: So this advice of career optionality, being the ultimate north star for anybody in their professional journey is something that I’m very strong on because a lot of people have the goal of, I don’t know, maybe I want to be a VP or I want to become a CEO. Or I don’t know, I want to be a manager and I want to people manage. And this becomes their north star and they start working towards it. But a lot of people when they get to their perceived corporate ladder north stars find themselves extremely dissatisfied, depressed even by how terrible that job is. Could people manage your job? I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy because it’s a terrible job if you don’t enjoy it and you don’t know if you’re going to like it until you actually do it.
So I think setting a title as your goal, which so many of us have titles as goals, is very wrong way to think about it as opposed to saying, “Hey, my goal professional is actually to have options so I can choose what I want to do. So I can choose what fits my life right now that I can choose what fits my skills and that fits my personality and that makes me happy.”
And to get career optionality, if that’s your goal, you start thinking about your progression a lot differently. You’re not starting to think about it of what will get me to the next title. You start thinking about what will can I do next year that will increase my option pool? And that’s very different than just getting to a higher title. And if you start thinking about evaluating opportunities or whether you should stay at the company, whether you should move at the company from the lens of does it increase my options if I stay at this company for one more year or does it keep it the same or does it actually potentially decrease? That is the right way to find your ultimate happy place and happy job that brings you energy, that brings you happiness versus just going for a title and then being very disappointed with what that brings along with it.
Lenny Rachitsky: Amazing advice. So important and something I’ll add that I think is a balance to what people may be feeling here is like, oh, I’ll just bounce around all the best logo companies and create this killer resume. I think you also need to build depth and actual experience that you can tap into if you do any of these things. For example, a lot of people want to jump to like I’m going to be a newsletter person, I’m going to start a podcast, be an advisor before they’ve done anything real and you have nothing to actually base your advice on and that part is very important.
Elena Verna: You have to earn your right to unlock optionality and earning that right does usually lie within full-time jobs. That is a universal truth. But then at some point you should start not just looking at full- time jobs as the only option that you have. You should start to think about when can you start unlocking new ones and testing the market on it.
Lenny Rachitsky: The other point is that you’ve been a great example of is it’s not a one-way door. You can have full-time job, go to something else, go back to full-time job, be an advisor, be an intern person, be a newsletter person. You do that really well.
Elena Verna: You should have to do it all. It’s all a menu of options and you pick a menu item that fits your best in any given point of your life. It’s never say never and never shut the door on anything. Absolutely.
Lenny Rachitsky: Oh my god, Elena, this was incredible. Before we get to our very exciting lighting round, is there anything else you want to share or leave listeners with, maybe a last nugget or thought or not because covered a lot already.
Elena Verna: No, I think we’ve covered so much. I don’t want to overwhelm.
Lenny Rachitsky: Let’s do it. With that, we’ve reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready?
Elena Verna: Yes, I’m ready.
Lenny Rachitsky: First question, surprise, surprise. What are two or three books you’ve recommended most to other people?
Elena Verna: Okay, so I just finished this book that I love so much, it’s not a professional book, but it’s Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. It’s the same author that wrote Martian. Martian also was made into a movie. So good, so good. Can’t put it down. I think I read it like two days straight. So highly recommend that. And the next one that I also started reading right now is Body Burst. Body Burst is so good. It’s actually takes into account AI and how we can upload our consciousness in AI and what can happen with that. So highly recommend that, I think it’s actually closer to what potentially can be in the truth for us in the future than not. But I’m a big sci-fi geek, so I read mostly sci-fi books.
Lenny Rachitsky: I have a sci-fi recommendation for you that comes from Noah Smith. I love his newsletters called Noah Opinion and he has a list of his favorite sci-fi books that I’ve been working my way through. It’s called, you may have read it by Werner Vogel, Fire Upon The Deep. Have you heard of this?
Elena Verna: No, I have not.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay. It’s described as not a sci-fi but space, like a space opera where it’s epic, the most epic scale of universe story.
Elena Verna: I’ll download it tonight, it’ll be on my list.
Lenny Rachitsky: It takes a little bit to get into. It’s quite unique, but you just keep going and it’s incredible and AI plays a big role in it actually.
Elena Verna: That’s awesome. I’ll download it.
Lenny Rachitsky: There you go. Okay, question number two. Favorite recent movie or TV show you’ve really enjoyed?
Elena Verna: Yes. I just got to watching Beef on Netflix. It’s so good. I’m not going to spoil it for anybody, Beef. You should watch it. It’s a limited series. It’s so good. It will run through. I love Veep on HBO. So funny. I’ve probably watched it two times already the entire series and I’ll probably watch it more because it just cracks me up every time. I think this is actually how our government works, so I’m very intrigued by that. And then the last one that I really liked that is coming up with the season two now. So you should catch up with season one is Last One of Us. If you don’t like zombie movies or zombie shows, don’t watch it. But if zombie and apocalypse is your cup of tea, Last One of Us is so good.
Lenny Rachitsky: Or the Last of Us? Or Last One of Us? Last of Us.
Elena Verna: Is it Last of Us?
Lenny Rachitsky: I’m Googling while we talk, Last of Us. I think it’s Last of Us. Yeah, the Last of Us.
Elena Verna: Oh, Last of Us. Okay, Last of Us.
Lenny Rachitsky: You’re saying there’s a third season coming soon. That’s exciting. I didn’t know that.
Elena Verna: Yeah, it’s so good.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay, I love it as well. Great pick. Okay. Your favorite product you recently discovered that you really like?
Elena Verna: I recently discovered that they make heated shoes and that changed my life. My feet are always cold and they are boots that actually have heated wires through them and I’m obsessed.
Lenny Rachitsky: And are you like charging it, like USB plugin kind of thing?
Elena Verna: Yeah, I just come in, I plug them in and then I go outside and I’m warm and I think it’s magical. I have a jacket, also heated jacket, now I have shoes. I just need my gloves and I’ll be all set.
Lenny Rachitsky: I love the USB powered clothing. And we should know you live not in Silicon Valley, you live on the East Coast sort of?
Elena Verna: Central. In Central. The coldest it gets is 30s here, but I’m always cold, so this is just my love language is something heated that I can sit on. I’m that cat sits underneath the light all the time. And then I also just got AirPod Max, my headphones. I couldn’t connect it to my computer. Still technical issues on that, but I love them. The sound is amazing. That’s my new favorite gadget that I’m obsessed about.
Lenny Rachitsky: What a cool combination, heated shoes and AirPods. Two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to that you find useful in work and life?
Elena Verna: Yeah, it’s really one, progress over perfection. I think that you just need to… The velocity of information is far more important than something that I think is perfect and perfection is an outcome that you get to. But progress over perfection all day, any day.
Lenny Rachitsky: Very appropriate for a head of growth person.
Elena Verna: Yes.
Lenny Rachitsky: Final question. You’re not only one of the smartest people I’ve met on growth, you’re also one of the funniest people on social media, especially on LinkedIn. If people aren’t following you, they should. They will not only learn, they’ll also be highly entertained. Is there a favorite meme that you created that you are very proud of that you can describe that we might want to link to?
Elena Verna: Yeah, so I also want to say a lot of people hate me for doing so much memes as well because they think it’s not serious. And I actually, I want to rebuttal that really quickly because I think humor is the best way to disarm people and to point out very painful situations that we’re facing with every single day or conundrums without putting anybody on defense. Because we can all laugh at the absurdity of the lives that we live in every single day. And a picture’s worth a thousand words. And sometimes memes are just the best way to communicate the most complex situations that we are facing within our corporate world. And they help us understand how common all of those situations are. We’re not unique. You’re not feeling alone by feeling down about what happened. Everybody’s going through the same thing. So that’s why I love memes because they help connect people on both sides.
Even if you’re making fun of one side because they’re like, yeah, that is true and this is so funny. So I’m a big proponent of that just because I think it’s actually a better way to both unite people and just talk about hard problems that otherwise would be not read if you put it in words.
But my favorite meme is actually one of the first ones that I’ve created and I think it’s from Family Guy where they have an elephant and the penguin standing and then there’s Moses I think, or some biblical character saying, “What the hell is this?” Looking at the elephant and the penguin. And the result of it is a child that has a penguin body and an elephant head. And if you think about elephant as product and penguin as marketing, what the hell is this is gross. Which is a byproduct, a weird, weird byproduct, product and marketing merged together that doesn’t really fit with either, yet it’s its own entity. I don’t know. I think that that’s the best to describe to people what [inaudible 01:33:14] is.
Lenny Rachitsky: So appropriate. Also, it’s hard to describe a meme and make it feel funny. So good job. Thank you for doing that. We’ll link to this meme in our show notes. Elena, this was incredible. Thank you again. Thank you for being our first ever third return guest. Hopefully there will be many more episodes of Elena Verna. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out and learn more and how can listeners be useful to you?
Elena Verna: Find me on LinkedIn or my Substack. I’m not competing with you Lenny, but I share a lot of my thoughts and everything that I learned on my own Substack. It’s just elenaverna.com. LinkedIn is for all of my memes, so go there if you want to laugh, but if you want to learn from what I’m learning, go to my Substack. And how you can be useful? Tell me what problems you’re facing now. Don’t tell me, oh, how growth is slowing down, what should I do? I can’t help you with that, too broad, but if you’re having a situation, there’s often really good [inaudible 01:34:09] for me to go and write about it or to do more research about it. So I just love to hear what some people’s minds, so I can both help them connect their dots as well as learn about it myself.
Lenny Rachitsky: And what’s the best way for them to do that? Is it like DM me on LinkedIn, any other-
Elena Verna: DM me on LinkedIn or just reply to my Substack newsletter email. It goes directly into my personal inbox, so I read every single one of them.
Lenny Rachitsky: That’s a really good tip. People don’t know that when you get an email on Substack, if you reply, just goes straight to the author.
Elena Verna: Exactly.
Lenny Rachitsky: Elena, thank you so much for being here.
Elena Verna: Okay, thank you for having me, Lenny.
Lenny Rachitsky: Bye everyone.
Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at LennysPodcast.com. See you in the next episode.
Glossary
| English | 中文 |
|---|---|
| adjacent user theory | 相邻用户理论 |
| ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) | 年度经常性收入(ARR) |
| Category penetration | 品类渗透率 |
| CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) | 首席营销官(CMO) |
| cognitive load | 认知负荷 |
| Contrarian Corner | 异见角 |
| Demand gen (Demand Generation) | 需求生成(Demand Gen) |
| earned channel | 赢得渠道 |
| earned tactics | 赢得策略 |
| Fire drill | 紧急事件 |
| flywheel | 飞轮 |
| Freemium | 免费增值(Freemium) |
| Global maxima | 全局最优解 |
| Go-to-market strategy | 上市策略 |
| growth engine | 增长引擎 |
| growth frameworks | 增长框架 |
| Growth hacks | 增长黑客 |
| growth loop | 增长循环 |
| growth model | 增长模型 |
| growth pod | 增长小组 |
| ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) | 理想客户画像(ICP) |
| J curve | J 型曲线 |
| KPI (Key Performance Indicator) | 关键绩效指标(KPI) |
| Law of Shitty Clickthroughs | 垃圾点击率定律(Law of Shitty Clickthroughs) |
| North star metric | 北极星指标 |
| one-off email / one email wonders | 一次性邮件 |
| optionality | 选择权 |
| owned channel | 自有渠道 |
| Product market fit | 产品市场契合点 |
| Product-led growth | 产品主导增长(PLG) |
| progress over perfection | 进步优于完美 |
| race car framework | 赛车框架 |
| S-curve | S 型曲线 |
| Sean Test | Sean Test(Sean Ellis 提出的产品市场契合度测试) |
| second horizon | 第二增长前沿 |
| Self-serve revenue | 自助服务收入 |
| sharing loop | 分享循环 |
| social resellers | 社交转售商 |
| third party auth | 第三方登录 |
| top of the funnel | 漏斗顶部 |
| user-generated content | 用户生成内容 |
| virality | 病毒式传播 |
| word of mouth loop | 口碑循环 |
Reformatted by reformat_english.py
10 种永远无效的增长策略 | Elena Verna(Amplitude、Miro、Dropbox、SurveyMonkey)
文字稿
增长是一个新兴领域
Elena Verna: 增长是一个相对较新的领域。人们对”增长黑客”有着极大的兴趣,总想知道什么是确保增长的万能之法。在社交媒体时代,人人都试图分享自己的诀窍和技巧,但这些东西往往脱离了具体语境,或者只适用于某个特定案例,实际上并不能作为一种通用模式。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我们先来聊聊那些永远不会奏效的增长策略。如果你在路线图上看到这些东西,很可能不应该去做。第一条是什么?
Elena Verna: 我们身处科技行业,创业公司很多,创业公司显然都在寻求增长。但业内有一个巨大的误解:要让增长启动起来,你需要一个增长团队。找到产品市场契合点以及如何分发产品,这不是你能外包给某个人去做的事情。
Lenny Rachitsky: 说得太有力了。我已经开始喜欢这个清单了。
Elena Verna: 第二条,这是我最喜欢的,可能有点辣。我从未见过哪次品牌重塑或重新设计——尤其是面向客户的营销网站——带来了好的业绩成果。新 CMO 上任后重新设计网站或品牌,仿佛这是其个人审美的体现,而且常常承诺获客量会提升,但最终从未兑现成任何有意义的成果。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这里有很多反直觉的观点,我很喜欢。
Elena Verna: 第三条,如果你在增长上做的每一个举措都是一次实验,那就有问题了。这几乎像一种疾病,一种令人瘫痪的疾病。
嘉宾介绍
Lenny Rachitsky: 今天的嘉宾是 Elena Verna,我播客有史以来第一位三次返场的嘉宾。Elena 是我认识的在 B2B 增长方面最聪明的人。她也非常幽默。她曾在 Miro、Amplitude、Dropbox 和 SurveyMonkey 等公司主导增长工作。她为数十家公司提供过增长方面的咨询,包括 Superhuman、MongoDB、Netlify、Similarweb、Sanity、Maze 等等。在我们的对话中,Elena 分享了 10 种永远不会奏效的增长策略和手法,但她却不断看到人们和公司在这些方面投入大量资源。她还介绍了她最喜爱的三个增长框架,帮助你理清如何思考增长,此外我们还简短地探讨了我们两人都走过的非传统职业路径。如果你在从事产品增长相关工作,或者领导、与从事增长工作的人共事,这期节目就是为你准备的。如果你喜欢这个播客,别忘了在你喜欢的播客应用或 YouTube 上订阅和关注,这是避免错过未来节目的最好方式,也对播客帮助极大。那么,有请 Elena Verna。
Elena,非常感谢你来参加节目。欢迎回到播客,我们史上第一位三次返场的嘉宾。太荣幸了,如果你没在看视频的话,我在手舞足蹈。谢谢你来到这里。 我刚才翻了一下我们的第一期节目,那是将近两年前录制的,2022 年 9 月,就在今天还有人留了一条评论。人们仍然在发现和观看那期节目,这条评论概括了我为什么喜欢邀请你上这个播客。这个人说:“哇,Elena 说的每一句话都凝结了多年的知识。这期节目需要慢慢消化、反复回看。感谢你与全世界分享你的经验。”
Elena Verna: 谢谢你邀请我。我的北极星指标是”每分钟洞察数”。无论什么时候参加任何现场会议,我都尽量用这个标准来衡量自己,所以它完全契合我所优化的目标。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这应该成为我这个播客的 KPI——“每分钟洞察数”。
Elena Verna: 我觉得你已经达到了。你的每分钟洞察数相当高。
Lenny Rachitsky: 确实是。我也确实在追求这一点,不过我也学到了,节目还需要让人感觉舒服,感受嘉宾的故事。这是一个有趣的平衡。你不能只是洞察、洞察、洞察。
Elena Verna: 关键还在于你如何呈现这些洞察。讲故事其实是让洞察真正留下来的一个重要部分。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这本身就是一个洞察了。
永远无效的增长策略
我想和你聊两个方面,我知道你在这两个领域思考了很多。一个是那些永远不会奏效、人们却不断花时间在上面的增长手法。我知道你有一份很好的清单,列出了你见过但就是不灵、人们却反复尝试的东西。第二个是增长框架——你最喜欢的增长框架,帮助人们理清如何思考增长、如何推动产品增长。我们先从永远不会奏效的增长策略开始。也许你可以先给个框架,聊聊我们接下来要讨论的这份策略清单是什么。
Elena Verna: 与营销、产品管理或工程相比,增长是一个相当新的领域。现在确实积累了一批拥有十年左右经验的人,但新手更多,而且新手与拥有五到十年增长经验的人之间的比例要高得多。因此,人们对”增长黑客”有着极高的热情。什么是确保增长的方法?什么是确保那个指标上升的方法?我怎样才能以最快的方式为公司的成功做出贡献?所有这些走捷径的想法——加上在社交媒体时代,人人都试图分享自己的诀窍和技巧,人们往往去追逐那些完全脱离语境的东西,或者它们只对某个特定案例有效,实际上并不构成一个可复用的模式,甚至根本不适用于他们自己的业务类型。
Elena Verna: 所以增长团队中存在大量的失败。事实上,我认为增长团队正在成为那些负责人被解雇率比首席营销官(CMO)还高的部门之一。因为人们入职时伴随着各种期望——“嘿,你是增长负责人,或者你是增长产品经理,又或者你是增长营销人员,你应该推动增长。“而当增长没有实现时,斧头就落下来了,人员被清退,循环重新开始,再次填充这些职位。我认为,关于增长到底是什么、在公司中应该如何开展,外界存在大量的错误信息。今天我只想聊聊我在担任企业顾问和实际操盘过程中看到的一些最常见的模式,因为这些问题如此明显,却鲜有资料可供人们学习借鉴。
Lenny Rachitsky: 太好了。第一点是什么?
过早招聘增长人员
Elena Verna: 第一点,我必须从招聘说起。市场上始终有大量增长职位空缺——从增长负责人到增长产品经理,这个领域的流动率非常高。正如我所说,很少有增长人员能在岗位上待超过一年或两年,不断有人流失,不断重新招聘。而在招聘过程中,存在大量错误,我想把它作为这份清单的起点。它不是什么路线图条目,但天哪,这里的问题实在太多了。我也曾在你的博客上写过关于增长招聘的文章,可以稍作参考。而我看到的最大的潜在问题之一,就是过早招聘增长人员。
我们身处科技行业,总有大量的创业公司。创业公司显然渴望增长,但这个领域存在一个巨大的误区:认为要让增长启动起来,就需要一个增长团队——这完全不对。要让公司增长起来,创始人和创始团队必须自己想办法把业务做到第一个一百万、五百万、一千万的经常性收入(ARR)。有些公司甚至到了一亿、两亿 ARR 时才建立增长团队,因为弄清楚你的产品市场契合点以及如何分销——这不是你可以外包给别人的事情。不可能靠一份光鲜的简历进来一个人,挥舞一下魔杖,就突然有了病毒式传播活动和大量注册用户,所有人都付费、所有人都留存——这根本不会发生。
创始人主导增长
我看到这个错误反复出现。我真的认为”创始人主导增长”这一理念还没有被足够广泛地推广——在你真正能够对用户群进行实验之前,你根本不需要增长团队。这意味着你需要有一定规模的用户量,才能从中学习、优化和创新,而这第一波增长必须由创始人来主导。
这背后有两个具体原因。第一,在你组建增长团队之前,首先你需要有扎实的产品市场契合点,即你对某个问题有了解决方案,客户不仅在使用你的方案解决那个问题,而且还在留存、持续使用。留存表现良好。你也可以用 Sean Test 中的”有多少人会说他们离不开你的产品”来衡量,总之要有某种程度的 PMF。第二,你需要数据。增长没有数据就无法运作。如果你只有十个用户或十个客户,那不叫数据,那只是一张列着客户名单的表格,你不需要增长团队来做这件事。直到你拥有足以进行分析、提出假设并开始进行实验的数据量之前,都不要考虑增长团队的事。
Lenny Rachitsky: 让我总结一下你刚才说的几个要点,方便大家理解——你基本上看到过创业公司试图招募增长负责人来解决增长问题,而你的洞察是,在你已经有很强的留存、Sean Test 得分很高、拥有大量数据之前,这几乎永远不会是解决问题的办法。你的建议是创始人应该尽可能长时间地亲自负责增长。一百万 ARR 是很多人推荐的一个里程碑。正如你所说,很多公司等的时间要长得多。
Elena Verna: 是的。坦白说,等得越久越好,因为这样你整个公司都会建立起对增长负责的意识,而不是把增长团队当作一座孤岛,说”他们来负责增长”,然后公司其他人呢?说实话,等得越久越好。
销售与增长:先招谁?
Lenny Rachitsky: 说起来,你刚才提到的内容中也涉及到销售,比如招聘第一个销售人员。我想知道你如何看待第一个增长负责人和第一个销售人员之间的关系?对于 B2B SaaS 来说,是不是增长负责人应该等更久才招,先招销售?你有什么建议?
Elena Verna: 这取决于你实际上打算通过什么方式收钱。如果你的收入主要通过销售团队来获取,那你绝对应该先招销售。事实上,在销售主导的公司中,增长团队未必那么必要。你可能会有一个增长营销团队,但那本质上是一个需求生成(demand gen)团队,只是重新包装成了”增长营销”的名头,这样他们可以多要百分之二十到三十的薪水。但说到底,是销售在负责你的变现、你的激活、你的留存和客户成功。对于销售主导的公司,没错,先招销售。除非你开始做自助服务收入——你试图通过产品自身来销售,可能是免费增值获客、试用获客,或者你确实有产品主导的激活和变现——那时你才需要增长人员。如果你从自助服务变现起步,增长招聘反而应该在销售之前。你的销售会更偏向机会主义性质。反之,如果是销售主导的公司,先招销售,等你准备好在销售模式之上叠加产品主导增长时,再考虑增长。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这个澄清非常到位。我听到的是,建议是只有当你有明确的产品市场契合点、并且是一家产品主导的公司、ARR 超过一百万之后再招聘增长负责人,大致是这样。
Elena Verna: 对。不过我不会说你要是”产品主导的公司”才行——更准确地说,是你依赖产品主导的模式来解决很多增长杠杆的问题,因为你不必是一家完全产品主导的公司。但如果产品——比如说通过 SEO 或 SEM——获客,然后产品本身负责激活他们,再由销售来成交,那销售显然也很重要,但增长也需要更早介入。只要你涉及任何产品主导的环节——产品负责获客、激活、变现或留存——那就是增长团队该介入的地方。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我们在第一次对话中深入讨论过这个具体话题,想深入了解的听众可以去听听,内容很丰富。
Elena Verna: 我得再提一遍。这种情况一直在发生。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我很喜欢。
Elena Verna: 我必须反复说。你得重复三遍才能让人记住。希望这是第三遍了。
Lenny Rachitsky: 完全同意。我之所以提这个,是因为大家可能对你描述的内容还想了解更多,我会指引他们去听我们的第一期节目,那一期对那个话题做了深入探讨。
Elena Verna: 太好了。
Lenny Rachitsky: 很好。在进入第二点之前,还有什么要补充的吗?
Elena Verna: 没有了,进入第二点吧。
Lenny Rachitsky: 来吧。
成熟企业的增长困境
Elena Verna: 第二点,转向另一端——成熟企业。我反复看到一个趋势,而且这个趋势现在愈发明显:当公司增长放缓时——这对很多企业来说是不可避免的,原因也各不相同——我们不去讨论增长为什么会放缓——然后他们招来一个光鲜的增长负责人来解决问题,基本上就是在说:“我们的业务在放缓,在走下坡路,我们要招这个人,或者组建这个团队,然后增长就会重新加速。“这是不会发生的。如果你的整体业务在放缓,你的增长负责人注定会失败,因为业务放缓的原因远比没有增长团队要深层得多。
增长团队可以做优化,可能提升 10%、15%,也许对你来说够了。但即便这个数字,也是在业务下行趋势下增长团队能做到的上限。重要的是,如果你的核心产品和核心营销存在问题,增长团队是帮不了你的。你必须正视那个房间里的大象——搞清楚业务为什么一开始就在放缓——而不是简单地把一个增长团队扔到问题上,指望他们创造奇迹,而其他业务部门继续沿着当初导致放缓的轨迹运转。
Lenny Rachitsky: 哇,这个观点我从没听过,太重要了,而且和你的第一点密切相关。增长团队不会帮你打造人们想要的产品,他们只会帮你把它做大。
Elena Verna: 没错。
Lenny Rachitsky: 如果你的业务在放缓,你的产品市场契合点基本上可能在消失,而增长团队解决不了这个问题。
Elena Verna: 消失,可能在退化,也可能被竞争对手蚕食,因为有人在侵占你的地盘。关键在于,增长可以放大优秀的产品市场契合点,增长可以在你已经在增长的基础上帮你增长得更快。但如果你在放缓,你的上市策略或核心产品策略、核心产品市场契合点存在问题,增长对此将完全无能为力。坦率地说,这是一笔巨大的浪费,因为在这种规模的公司里,你会组建相当大的增长团队来覆盖所有已有的产品流程和界面。
这是一笔巨大的开支。投资回报率,充其量可能是一比一——你投入多少,可能就产出多少。但仅靠增长团队,不可能创造出重新加速的 J 型曲线。我觉得”增长团队”这个名字反而成了绊脚石——“我们在找增长,你有增长团队吗?“没有。不过我也没想到更好的命名方式,但我觉得这里存在一个误解,以为有一个完美的增长负责人、一个完美的增长团队,能够逆转整个业务的轨迹。
什么时候该招增长负责人
Lenny Rachitsky: 那么对于正在考虑”我是不是该招一个增长负责人”的人来说,什么时候该招?作为一家成熟公司——
Elena Verna: 如果你的收入增长或其他指标——不管是周活跃用户还是其他什么——在下降,至少要先让它企稳,止住下滑的势头。要能看到核心产品和核心营销团队至少能够逆转指标退化的明确趋势。理想情况下,你甚至应该已经看到一些初步的生命迹象,看到业务中某些领域存在潜力,然后再把增长投入进去,把它充分放大。但如果你还在下行,就别这么做,因为在大约一年时间里,结果会非常令人失望。
Lenny Rachitsky: 很棒。很好的一点,我们继续。第三点。
品牌重塑与首页重设计的增长幻觉
Elena Verna: 第三点,这是我最喜欢的,可能会有点辛辣,因为如果有市场营销人员在这里听的话——做品牌重塑,更具体地说,通过首页重设计来推动增长。这真的让我很心痛,我经历过太多次了,我从未、从未见过哪怕一次品牌重塑或重设计——尤其是面向用户的营销网站——带来好的业绩成果。当然,你做品牌重塑可能有很多合理的原因,你可能需要重新设计营销网站,因为你正在进入新市场、新品类,你的产品已经进化了,需要全面更新。但这些情况更像是一个滞后指标,表明某些东西需要改变,而你正在改变它,然后你知道自己需要拼命优化,才能把它恢复到之前的业绩水平。
这就像是先退一步,但上方的空间确实更大,不过你得付出努力才能到达那个上限。然而有太多公司,总是上演同样的故事:我招了一位新的首席营销官(CMO),新 CMO 上任后说:“我这里有什么?这房子不是我喜欢的风格。让我重新刷墙,我要这个蓝色,沙发放这边。“他们开始几乎按照自己的个人品味来设计网站、设计品牌。而且往往还会承诺:获客量会上升,品类渗透率会上升,认知度或知名度会上升。
这些承诺从未兑现为任何有意义的成果,因为——再说一遍——如果你把它作为迈向解锁新的全局最优解的一步,那我很支持,去做吧。但你要清楚前面有大量的工作等着你,才能真正解锁那个全局最优解。但如果承诺通过首页重设计或营销网站重设计来驱动更多获客,那注定是一个落空的承诺——随之而来的将是大量的代理公司费用支出,通常超过一百万美元,大量关于品牌色到底是哪种蓝色的争论,至少八到十个月的开发周期,以及之后非常平淡的结果。
Lenny Rachitsky: 天哪,我已经爱上这个清单了,太棒了。回到你说的那一点,如果你清醒地意识到这不是用来驱动增长的,那它可能仍然值得做——我们是在为一个世界级的未来品牌做铺垫,我们知道当前的品牌很差,首页需要更新。如果你心里清楚它不会驱动增长,那可能没问题。
Elena Verna: 每一次我看到营销网站做品牌重塑,至少在业绩上都是倒退一步,然后就被当作紧急事件去修复。如果你指望它立刻出成果,就别做;至少要让团队清楚,要花多长时间才能达到你认为会超过原有品牌的那个拐点。
Lenny Rachitsky: 不仅营销网站,大部分重设计我都有过这样的经历。产品的重设计也是如此。
Elena Verna: 产品重设计也是一样。光是在产品里换个 logo、改个配色,要投入多少产品和工程的工作量?简直疯狂。而且从来没有任何成果,完全没有。
Lenny Rachitsky: 而且就像你说的,那种情况就是:“我们花了六个月重做了新手引导,所有新功能都建立在新的设计和体验上,不可能不上线。每个团队都在往新体系迁移,我们就直接上线,然后再慢慢找补回来。我们会想办法把它拉回来的。“事情就是这样发展的。
Elena Verna: 这是一个全新的起点,而这个起点会比你当前已经优化过的体验低很多。不管当前体验优化得好不好,都不重要——它至少经过了某种程度的优化,而品牌重塑则完全是在黑暗中射击。它可能更好看,没错,但好看不代表它能表现出色。当然,凡事不能说绝对。有时候它可能真的有效,如果你碰巧成功了,我真为你高兴。但那是异常值,不要把它当成规律。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我正想说,正在做这类事情的听众大概都在想:“不,我觉得我们这次有戏。我们确实深思熟虑过,它可能真的会产生积极的效果。“从你的经验来看,听起来你偶尔见过它成功,还是说基本上从来没成功过?
Elena Verna: 我见过最好的情况,也就是净中性结果,同时让我们获得了朝着更大目标优化的更好基础。这就是最好的情况。所以如果你正在做这件事,我最大的建议不是让你停下来。而是要理解,上线时的目标不应该是在上线后七天的数据读数中看到性能提升。目标应该是:我们会上线,我们大概率会看到一次下滑,要把这个下滑建模并预测出来,然后给自己至少两到三个月的时间,理想情况下更像是六个月,去真正把它优化回到一个良好的状态,有可能超过原来的表现。但你需要把上线后三到六个月的工作量提前规划进去,而很多公司和团队恰恰忘了这一点,因为他们直接转向下一个项目了。因为那种感觉就像——大项目、大发布、然后出发去下一个。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我太喜欢了,我们才聊到第三条就已经这么精彩了。太棒了。来,第四条。
第四条:对竞争对手过度执迷
Elena Verna: 好的。第四条是对竞争对手过度执迷。好,这里有一个小小的陷阱。我经常拆解各种公司,我有上千个 Gmail 账号,用来注册各种产品。我会完整走一遍它们的体验流程,看它们的变现策略,看它们的激活环节。我在所服务的公司的直接竞争对手上也做同样的事。我想知道自己面对的是什么。
所以,了解竞争对手在做什么极其重要。从竞争对手体验中的某些方面获得灵感,是产生创意或将某些做法尝试引入自己产品的绝佳起点。但如果直截了当地说:“嘿,我们要把所有这些最佳战术、所有这些流程全盘照搬,因为它们做得比我们好。我们就直接抄过来,做得一模一样。为什么我们的新手引导跟这个不一样?这家公司那么成功。“——问题就出在这里。因为每一个体验都与其客户、其渠道高度绑定。你甚至不知道你看到的到底是不是它们真正的体验——你用的可能是测试账号,或者你看到的是基于你注册来源、你声称的身份而个性化定制的内容。所以大多数时候你甚至不知道整体体验到底是什么样。把这些东西放进自己的产品里,只会导致非常平庸的结果。而且很多人这样做是把它当作捷径。“好吧,我们不想去做创意发散或用户调研,不想做用户访谈,也不想做 A/B 测试。它对他们有效,对我们也一定有效。直接上吧。“结果 95% 的情况下都会失败。
当然,有些方面我是明确推荐的。我已经说了,灵感。我一直用它来做灵感参考。我会想:“好吧,有什么酷的东西?大家都在做什么?“因为我就是想保持对行业动态的了解,知道其他人在落地什么,而且如果它在控制体验中奏效、效果更好,那就更值得关注。我大量使用网络存档来查看被锁定的页面。我会看,好吧,去年它长什么样?为什么他们整个页面是这个样子,或者定价页面是这样?我会分析这些,并尝试推断出一些结论。
我还有一个感受:当你拆解了大量公司之后,你会开始注意到很多模式。你会发现:“哦,这些元素总是一样的。“这意味着所有这些公司都殊途同归地走到了这些元素上,而且它们看起来是有效的制胜要素。你可以把这些要素拿过来放进自己的产品里,但你永远不能跳过创意发散、设计、用户调研、客户访谈、实验验证这些步骤。
而且你应该始终保持与自己产品创新的平衡。因为抄袭竞争对手是通往平庸最快的道路——如果你抄袭了别人,你永远不会成为领导者。领导者从定义上讲,就是能够在某件事上与群体拉开差距的人。如果你只是想成为——我不知道有谁会故意想当平庸的中游选手——但也许这是一个不错的起点,但绝不应该是最终目标。
基准数据的陷阱
我停嘴之前还想说一点,就是基准数据。在这里使用基准数据也非常危险,因为基准数据通常覆盖所有竞争对手、所有软件产品。而不同公司定义数字的方式千差万别。就算你看一些看似简单的东西,比如注册量。好吧,你平均应该获得多少注册量?或者从潜在访客到注册的转化率?从注册到激活用户的转化率?这完全取决于你如何定义”潜在访客”。有些公司把它定义为全部流量,有些定义为新流量,有些基于新 IP 地址、新的持久化 ID。Google Analytics 怎么定义,Amplitude 怎么定义——都不同。
所以这些定义差别太大了。把从竞争对手那里得来的基准数据拿来就说”我们应该在这个水平”,同样非常危险,因为根据你如何定义指标,它可能根本不适用。而所有这些基准数据的缺陷之一,就是没有去审视具体的定义。这并不是说基准数据不是决策中极其有价值的数据点——它是一个你应该利用的输入,用来判断什么是可能的。但如果盲目采用并以此设定目标,那就是注定让你的所有举措和努力失败。
Lenny Rachitsky: 你是告诉我没有捷径吗?
Elena Verna: 我希望有啊。我都干这行超过 15 年了。如果有任何捷径,我早就全部用上了。有模式,有框架,但没有捷径。
从竞争对手获取灵感的正确方式
Lenny Rachitsky: 听到这里,人们会说,“好吧,不要照搬竞争对手,把它当作灵感。“但这两者之间的界限有点难以把握。你能想到一个例子吗——你从某人那里获得了非常有价值的灵感,并应用到了你合作的公司?或者你照搬了某人的做法,结果”哦,失败了,这是个糟糕的主意”。
Elena Verna: 我用竞争对手来理解人们如何收集某些信息或完成某些步骤的通用框架。比如分享模型——很多产品都有”嘿,你能把这个分享给别人吗?“这样的功能。你可以花大量时间去研究它应该长什么样。或者你也可以去看看 Slack、Figma、Miro、Notion——看看 Google,他们是怎么做分享模型的。你可以看看所有这些,然后说,“好的,这是它们所有共同拥有的要素。这些是我认为适用于我产品的部分。这些是不适用的,这是我能从中推导出来的。”
我把它作为创意生成的输入,但我从不把它当作最终结果的模板——这么说不知道是否清楚。因为不从零开始是很有帮助的。空白起步的问题是真实存在的,而竞争对手是一个避免这种情况的绝佳方式,可以获得输入,但绝不能说”哦,我们可以跳过设计周期直接开工”,或者”只要换成我们的配色就行。对他们有效的,对我们也会有效。“我有大量的 Miro 看板,上面有每个人的新手引导流程、定价页面、分享模型、邀请同事的模型,我一直在参考。
但它们从来不是我会直接用于任何公司的现成方案。我会说,“嘿,我觉得这是一个很好的起点。以下是那些我认为对你的公司和产品会非常有效的要素,把这部分拿去用。剩下的你们需要自己去完成,但至少这样有了一个起点。”
这也是为什么我也开始做更多自己的原型——更准确地说是骨架,展示这些流程中你应该包含哪些要素。我有一个定价页的骨架,有一个首页的骨架,但你需要把属于你自己的东西填充进去,才能真正发挥作用。
Lenny Rachitsky: 让我当年意识到这一点的,是在 Airbnb 的时候,尤其是想到人们会看我们的流程然后觉得,“他们已经把一切都搞明白了。我们直接照搬他们的做法就好,太周到了,他们什么都测试过了。“而作为内部人,我们知道根本不是这么回事,这里面有太多是拍脑袋的决定,而且我们自己都对其中很多部分不满意。想到人们试图照搬这些东西、以为我们知道自己在做什么——就像,“你们到底在想什么?”
Elena Verna: 天哪,这种事真发生在我身上过。不久前在 Dropbox,有人来找我,说”哦,我看了一下”——是激活流程的某个页面——他们说,“哦,我太喜欢这个页面了。太酷了。我很喜欢你们做的这个。我要把它带回到我的公司。“我的反应是,“这个页面我们已经十年没动过了。这个页面只有一小部分用户能看到。求你别照搬。别抄它。它的表现糟透了。我知道它还挂在那里,但它本来不应该挂在那里。没有人是有意精心设计放上来的。“所以这绝对是一个你可能踩的大坑。
Lenny Rachitsky: 对,如果是家大公司,就假设他们对每个像素、每个决定都那么聪明、那么严谨。
Elena Verna: 要是人们知道那些大公司里有多少疯狂的事情在发生,有多少混乱就好了。
Lenny Rachitsky: 哎,这都可以做另外一整期播客了。
Elena Verna: 另外一整期播客,没错。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好了,第五条。
你的问题并不独特
Elena Verna: 好的,这一条我来说。这条有点元层面的意思,但我看到它一直在发生。我们喜欢认为自己的问题是独一无二的。我在这个公司工作,我们有这样的增长问题,我们需要从头开始找出解决方案。这也许和竞争对手那一条有点关联,但很抱歉要给大家泼冷水——你的问题并不独特。99% 的情况下我可以确定这一点。你的问题已经被其他很多人在很多地方经历过了,你试图从零重新设计解决方案,是对上市时间的浪费,而且机会成本巨大。
所以我最想告诉大家的是,不要觉得你有独特的问题。你没有。我知道我们很希望能这样。有独特的东西值得去学习确实很诱人,但鉴于现在有这么多创业公司,我们这个行业、你所在的行业——无论哪个行业——有这么多人,你的问题已经被人解决过了。或者至少,在你这个问题上有过大量的失败经验值得你学习。最重要的一点是,每当你有一个项目,或者有一个需要提升的指标时,永远不要从零开始。不要从零开始。这是你能做的最糟糕的事情,因为你会浪费大量周期去尝试解决一个很可能已经被解决的问题。那么你应该如何着手呢?
你可以看看竞争对手是怎么解决这个问题的。这当然是一个输入来源。你应该去找那些已经解决了这个问题的人——那些人是存在的,而且人们很喜欢谈论自己做了什么。利用这种人类心理,去找这些人,直接问他们,“你们是怎么做的?做了什么?结果怎样?“显然,不是每个人都会回复你,但我们有 LinkedIn、有 X。走出去,找到你认为是解决过类似问题的人,或者在你的社交网络里打听谁可能有过类似的解决方案,直接去和人聊。如果你说有什么真正的增长黑客的话,这就是一个——通向最优方案的捷径。
最后我还要说一点,把每一个问题都当作独特问题来解决是极其低效的。我们的市场发展速度如此之快,你需要把你的解决方案模式化。模式化——这是个词吗?
Lenny Rachitsky: 让我们把它变成一个词。
Elena Verna: 形成模式。把你的解决方案形成模式。你越能不再把它看作一个独特的数据点或独特的问题,而是看作——“我需要把它归入已有的模式,或者我需要找出一个不仅能解决这个问题也能解决其他问题的框架”——你就能越快地至少达到解决方案的 60%。然后你就可以做非常有创意的实现了。但从零手动做到 60%,作为一次性的投入,我们这个行业现在已经没有时间这样做了,除非你想被甩在后面。
Lenny Rachitsky: 砰。很有力量的话。你有没有什么例子,不管是你做错了——以为某个问题是独特的然后意识到应该先找人聊聊,还是你确实意识到某个问题并不独特?
Elena Verna: 我给你讲一个我在 Miro 时的例子。在 Miro,我们最初尝试建立社区,这个任务交给了我,而我之前从来没有做过这件事。我绞尽脑汁,像撞墙一样——“好吧,我该怎么做?用什么软件?从哪里获取用户?里面要放什么样的内容?“
从社区建设到寻求帮助
Elena Verna: 所以我当时几乎是把它当成一个寻找产品市场契合点的过程来做,结果失败了无数次。坦白说,我只有一年的时间来取得某种程度的进展,否则这个项目就会被关掉,因为公司没有耐心,公司在快速推进。如果这是一个失败的节点,要么这个项目会从我手上拿走,这很公平,要么公司会直接关停它,这对我来说和公司整体都将是巨大的失败。
所以我开始去找很多做过社区的人聊。我记得跟 Atlassian 的 Caroline 聊过,她搭建过社区。后来我还请她做了顾问。她问我:“你说的是用户社区,还是代理商社区,还是合作伙伴社区?“我当时就惊了。我根本没有考虑到这些不同的角度,我当时脑子里想的只有用户。她说:“你不一定要从用户社区开始。如果你想尽快看到成果,先做代理商或合作伙伴社区。“她用一种结构化的方式帮我把这个问题理清楚,然后我据此实施的东西效果好了很多——如果我没跟她聊过,可能要六到八个月之后才能走到那一步。
所以我觉得,这需要你先承认自己并非无所不知,并且有勇气说”我需要帮助”。我当时的头衔已经不小了——在 Miro 我已经是代理首席营销官(CMO),但我说”我不知道怎么做这件事”。实际上这样做反而比你想的更能赢得别人的尊重。很多人害怕承认自己不知道怎么解决一个问题,所以才从头开始摸索。但你真的需要放下自我,尽快去寻求帮助,而不是在每一个失败节点上逐一撞墙。
Lenny Rachitsky: 而真正会伤害你自尊的是失败。所以你越能通过跟人交流、做研究来避免失败、让项目取得成功,就越好。
Elena Verna: 公平地说,失败是不可避免的。说到增长,增长就是关于失败的。我的人生座右铭、关于增长的座右铭是:你必须通过失败来学习,不可能一直成功。成功是大量失败的产物。但问题在于,你有多少时间来失败?很多时候我们没有意识到,在一次成功之前需要经历多少次失败的循环,而公司,甚至整个市场,根本没有时间等你。所以,失败当然还会发生,但失败的周期会被大大缩短。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好,我们已经过了一半了。你的清单上有 10 项,对吧?
Elena Verna: 对,对,10 项。下一项是个很好的。
前五条总结
Lenny Rachitsky: 我先快速总结一下前五条,然后我们继续。第一,招聘增长负责人要比你想象中再等等——等到你有了产品市场契合点,大概一百万的规模,尤其是如果你是自助服务模式的话。
第二,如果你的增长在下滑,增长负责人解决不了这个问题。先把下滑止住。
第三,重新设计首页、营销页面、品牌重塑,不仅不会帮你增长,反而很可能会损害增长、拖慢进度。所以要睁大眼睛走进去。
第四,不要只是照搬竞争对手,假设他们知道自己在做什么,假设他们的做法对你也适用。把它当作灵感来用。另一方面,向专家、竞争对手、趋势等寻求灵感,来帮你解决你认为”没人解决过”的问题。事实证明,你遇到的每一个问题,大概率都有人以某种方式解决过了。
Elena Verna: 对,尤其是在增长领域。我知道这同样适用于很多产品管理和营销的工作,但在增长领域,当你在讨论”如何提升激活率”或者”激活和变现之间有巨大的流失”时,这些东西的模式化程度比你想象的要高得多。所以去找到那些模式,而不是试图从零重新设计。
第六条:增长团队不应主导付费渠道
Lenny Rachitsky: 好,我们继续。第六条。
Elena Verna: 下一条。这一条也有点辣。那就是增长团队拥有某些渠道的问题。很多增长团队负责获客,也就是说拥有渠道并在增长中优先做 SEO、SEM、社交媒体,我认为这是增长团队最容易犯的大错之一。显然,我不是说不要做 SEO,也不是说不要做 SEM,即自然搜索或付费搜索。我不是那个意思。但是,作为增长团队,你的头号优先级应该是打造你自己的、或者你赢得的渠道——也就是你赢得的、其他任何人都无法与你竞争的渠道。
什么意思呢?当你在做自然搜索或付费搜索时,你在让 Google 更有钱。对 Google 来说很好,Google 是一家了不起的公司,但把钱投进付费营销,你在付钱给他们,你在为他们的分发渠道付费。如果你也在做社交媒体,比如 Instagram 之类的付费广告,那也挺好的,但所有这些都依赖算法。算法可以给你,但算法也可以随时拿走。你没有任何控制权,因为你并不拥有这些渠道。你在别人的渠道里跟其他玩家竞争。
自有赢得渠道的力量
Elena Verna: 那么,另一方面,也可以有你自己的赢得渠道。什么是赢得渠道?它真正涉及的是产品主导增长获客的概念,也就是说你依靠病毒式传播、口碑、用户生成内容来吸引漏斗顶部的新用户。那为什么这是”赢得的”,为什么我把它排在——比如说自然搜索(SEO)之上呢?SEO 当然很棒,但同样,搜索流量最终流向 Google。这对 Google 来说很好。相比之下,如果你在自己的社区中建立自己的用户生成内容,没有其他任何人能在其中与你竞争。那是你的。你的竞争对手无法买到那些眼球。你的人会吸引更多的人。
人与人之间的推荐就是一切。所以 Lenny,如果我,比如说注册了 Superhuman,然后邀请你加入,这比你通过付费广告找到 Superhuman 是强大得多的获客策略。尤其是在我们当前这个时代,搜索作为一种界面正在向 AI 界面转变,而 AI 界面对所有内容的归因要少得多。内容几乎正在变成一个数据库,而一个新的 UI 正在其上构建。以前 Google 是 UI,现在 AI 正带着一个新的 UI 进来,而你对这个正在开发的新 UI 几乎没有多少控制权。
Elena Verna: 把重心放在这些你拥有的赢得渠道上,成为最优先的事项。如果你的增长路线图上没有这些,未来一到两年你将陷入很大的麻烦,因为你的获客成本只会不断上升。你在这些渠道中的竞争只会不断加剧。你会不断向算法之神祈祷赐予你流量,但同样,它们随时可以收回。如果一个增长团队没有在病毒式传播和用户生成内容上投入足够的时间来创建自己的赢得获客渠道,这确实是增长团队最根本的失败点之一。
Lenny Rachitsky: 哇,好的。这太精彩了。理论上这本身就可以做一期独立的播客节目,讲如何具体落地这件事。我们这里不展开策略细节。而且这也未必适用于每家公司。你的观点是,你可以用其他方式增长,但这毫无疑问是……
Lenny Rachitsky: 你的观点是你可以用其他方式增长,但这毫无疑问是最强大、最有效、成本最低、最有可能成功的方式——前提是你能把它想清楚。
Elena Verna: 不是成本最低。它实际上需要大量的产品和工程资源,甚至营销资源来搭建。所以它不是预算上的成本,而是人员上的成本——需要有人投入工作来创建你自己的获客渠道。你说得对,也许它不适用于所有人,但它实际上适用于比人们意识到的更多的产品。因为每一个产品都有某种团队功能,某种角色需要完成的事情。每个产品都可以驱动口碑循环……好吧,实际上这话不对,不是每个产品都能驱动口碑循环,但它们可以驱动推荐,也可以创建用户生成内容。
这些策略中通常至少有一种适用于某个产品。所以确实存在创建某种赢得渠道的机会,即使一开始可能觉得不太自然,这取决于你是如何达到产品市场契合点的,以及你在最初几个阶段的扩张方式。但如果你不去探索它,不去投资它,或者至少不去尝试和经历失败,我认为你真的把太多的增长未来交到了你几乎没有控制权的外部力量手中。
Lenny Rachitsky: 所以这里的建议是,你的增长团队——他们做 SEM、付费增长和 SEO 没问题,但大部分精力和投资应该放在赢得渠道、自有渠道上,特别是病毒式传播生成的内容?
渠道多元化
Elena Verna: 多元化。就是让你的策略多元化。这样就不会所有的增长都依赖于别人给你分发渠道的权限。举个例子,Dropbox 超过 50% 的获客来自分享。我把东西上传到 Dropbox,也许我需要把它发给别人签名,也许我只是需要分享这个文件来传给别人,也许我需要把这个文件作为最终成果分享给我的客户。那么那个接收者就知道了 Dropbox,所以品牌知名度的问题就解决了。
通过分享这个行为,你实际上几乎已经激活了那个接收者,所以你不需要再教育他们产品怎么用之类的事情。而这些接收者中有一定比例会注册成为 Dropbox 用户,这占到了获客的 50%。这是一个稳定的赢得渠道,没有其他人能与之竞争,可以说只有 Dropbox 自己才可能把它搞丢。我们当时确实有专门的增长小组专注于这件事。因为优化发送方体验和接收方体验非常重要,这是一个如此强大的增长引擎,推动了整个公司的发展,每个企业都应该尝试建立至少一个这样的渠道。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我想这对很多增长团队来说会是一个很好的推动力,去思考我们能在这里做些什么?第七条。还剩四条。
增长模型的演进
Elena Verna: 第七条。我们上次的播客至少也谈过一点这个。但我看到这个问题一直被反复提出,而且人们害怕在这方面投资,这是一个错误。每一家公司在启动增长工作时,要么专注于产品主导增长——也就是所有事情都自助完成;要么专注于销售加营销——也就是有销售团队,有营销团队,他们来承担所有工作,产品只负责创建功能。这在一段时间内是没问题的,取决于这段时间有多长。但如果不把通过产品、通过营销和通过销售的所有增长方式叠加起来作为演进,这是很多增长团队未能迭代和创新的巨大错误。
我最好的类比方式是:如果产品找到了产品市场契合点,这很好,但那个产品市场契合点不会永远支撑这个产品。他们总是需要第二阶段。他们总是需要有产品市场契合点的扩展努力,以便继续抓住尽可能多的人、解决尽可能多的人的问题,并扩大他们的团队。增长也是一样的。如果你有一个对你有效的增长模型,那很好,恭喜你。优化它,增长它,规模化它,组建团队来培育它、放大它,但你需要演进它,而那个演进需要通过在现有模型之上叠加其他增长模型来实现。这样,第一,你可以多元化,避免依赖单一增长模型失败的风险,因为很多时候你会陷入收益递减的局面。
我很喜欢 Andrew Chen 在这方面的一篇文章,叫做”垃圾点击率定律”(Law of Shitty Clickthroughs)。如果你反复过度优化同一个东西,回报会微乎其微,而且有些增长模型的时间跨度非常有限。有些规模很大,有些可以持续增长——比如 Dropbox 的分享循环,已经运作了 17 年,现在仍然在发挥作用。那确实了不起。但这非常罕见,属于异常情况。大多数增长循环在最初的五到七年内就会耗尽其产生有意义结果的能力。
持续叠加增长模型
Elena Verna: 所以持续叠加这些不同的增长模型——我具体说的是产品主导增长、营销主导增长、销售主导增长,并不断地将其引入到生态系统中——这才是区分那些能够长期持续增长的公司与那些可能经历一个很大爆发、甚至达到独角兽级别 70%、80% 或更高增长率但随后开始放缓的公司的关键。而且不要等到放缓发生才开始行动。你需要真正开始思考吸引人们来增长的不同方式,这样你就不会在市场上留下空隙让其他人进入并占据。而不是你应该以各种可能的方式与客户互动。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我对这个的理解是,每个增长模型和增长杠杆都有 S 型曲线,对吧?最终它会起作用,然后放缓,所以你要寻找下一个能推动业务增长的 S 型曲线。
Elena Verna: 是的,完全正确。我经常看到的情况是,尤其是增长团队在某个项目上取得了很大的成果后,他们就会一直反复专注于那件事。有时候这种专注是合理的。就像我说的,Dropbox 的分享循环有专门的增长团队负责。很好,但与此同时,对于所有的情况来说,这种专注并不总是合理的——或者说你需要意识到这个东西已经没有更多油水可榨了,然后你需要转向,继续前进。
这实际上也引出了我想说的下一点:你需要每 18 个月做一次。因为很多尝试会失败。大约每五年,你肯定需要新的渠道、新的增长循环、新的策略、新的引擎来驱动你的增长引擎——可以这么说。无论是在自助服务之上叠加销售,还是你目前在获客方面做了很多病毒式传播,然后要更重地投入营销。但每五年,必须有某个大的东西开始承担你增长量中很大的比例。而为了实现这一点,每 18 年你需要引入一些——
Lenny Rachitsky: 18 个月。
Elena Verna: 抱歉,对。每 18 个月你需要引入一些新东西,以便让它持续演进。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这是我们正在讲的清单上的第八条吗,还是一个额外的建议?
Elena Verna: 不,这只是一个额外的建议。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的,酷。明白了。所以这里的建议本质上是,你会找到某个帮助你增长的东西,假设它会在某个时候放缓,开始考虑其他可以叠加在上面的杠杆和增长模型。
Elena Verna: 对。
每个增长模型都有主力杠杆
Lenny Rachitsky: 我观察到的一种情况——让我知道你是否同意——通常会有一个杠杆在很长一段时间内承担了你大部分的增长,所以所有其他东西不会那么大,但它们仍然很重要。
Elena Verna: 我的做法是,我尽量让增长团队每年把 20% 到 25% 的时间用于引入新的增长循环,或新的渠道,或一些新东西,能够潜在地给我们的增长引擎带来额外的推动力。不是每个冲刺或每个季度,而是按年度来算。我知道其中很多会失败。这些新尝试不能立刻被设定任何增长指标上的目标,因为你不能立即给它设定货币化或获客方面的目标。如果你不让它演化为可以被货币化、可以承担获客责任的东西,你就是在它还没站起来之前就把它砍掉了。举个例子,在 Miro 上有一个用户生成内容库,收录了人们创建的所有 Miro 看板,我们大概花了 18 个月才开始对它设定指标期望。
在那之前,它只是我们在测试的东西。它在被很多人使用,但我们觉得,我们甚至不太确切地知道这个东西最终怎么整合在一起。然后它开始同时作为参与引擎和获客引擎起飞了。但重要的是不断给你的团队留出空间去尝试那些新想法。否则,你会发现你的增长循环和增长引擎在放缓,而你又没有时间去找到第二个增长前沿。那是最糟糕的处境。那就是增长开始放缓的时候。而要从那种情况中恢复几乎是不可能的,因为你需要收入。你需要收入,你需要收入,你需要收入。而这些增长循环平均需要六个月、一年、一年半才能开始产生甚至可见的收入。所以这就是为什么你需要尽早把叠加增长模型纳入你的计划中。
具体的增长循环和渠道建议
Lenny Rachitsky: 为了让那些开始觉得”糟糕,我得这么做”的人更具体一些,你能不能给我们列一个——不需要穷尽——潜在的增长循环、杠杆、方法、引擎的清单供大家参考?你已经提到了几个,但就给一个清单,让人们说,好的,明白了,也许我们会尝试其中一个。
Elena Verna: 我非常推崇从用户生成内容中创建增长循环。考虑到目前 AI 和 SEO 领域发生的一切,你在内容策略上最大的杀手锏就是利用用户生成内容。无论是用户生成的模板、用户生成的案例研究、评论,还是其他什么,你现在就需要开始投资它,从中创建一个内容库,将它用于激活目的,然后用于获客目的,利用社区来激发围绕它的讨论。这是一个所有人都应该考虑的非常好的策略,看看你的产品里是否有这方面的潜力。其他方向可以是,比如说,我们的产品非常个人化,但我们能不能为它创建一个推荐机制?
对于 B2C 来说,这其实非常直接。很多 B2C 产品靠推荐蓬勃发展。对于 B2B 来说,它可以是邀请其他团队成员进入产品来完成其他待办任务。嘿,我做了这个,我需要我的经理看看。能不能创建一个报告分享给我的经理?然后突然之间它就开始在公司内部传播了。所以创建几乎相当于额外产品功能的特性,然后这些特性就有可能为你创造这些循环。它可以是一系列不同的东西。显然,我强烈建议先了解所有这些赢得策略的完整菜单。我其实应该为此写一篇博客文章。然后看看哪些适合你。因为至少构思阶段是必须要做的。尤其是如果你依赖搜索引擎来获客的话,尽快开始考虑一些赢得渠道。
Lenny Rachitsky: 尽管你建议在赢得渠道、自有渠道上花更多时间,但也要探索 SEO、探索付费增长,对吧?还有销售?
Elena Verna: 绝对的。我的意思是,几乎所有人都会做付费——可以说可能太早了。有一种观点认为不应该做。有的公司现在不应该做付费。但 SEO、社交转售商,所有这些都是很好的策略。显然,我非常偏向赢得渠道,因为一旦你把它建立起来,那就是一个持续不断馈赠你的礼物,没有人能把它从你那里拿走。但这并不意味着其他策略和其他渠道不应该去探索。
Lenny Rachitsky: 太棒了。我们继续吧。还有三个。第八条。
第八条:聘请顾问
Elena Verna: 第八条,这条有点劲爆,我觉得很多人没有在做,我也不知道他们为什么不做。我认为这是一股能极大推动你前进的力量。正如我在之前的增长策略中提到的,不起作用的做法是认为每个问题都是独特的、需要你自己去解决。也许这与其说是一个”是否有效”的建议,不如说是——不聘请顾问是我不推荐的。你完全可以每周找任何人聊一个小时。当然,你得付钱。没有人会免费贡献自己的时间,大家都非常非常忙。但是聘请顾问是你所能做的最大的职业放大器和业务放大器。因为建立一个由拥有所有这些数据点和模式认知的人组成的网络,可以把你推到很远的地方。
这不意味着你要照搬顾问说的每一句话。重点不在这里。他们不是策略制定者。但他们是你决策过程中的额外输入,是你原本不会拥有的输入。你可以去请 Atlassian 的人,你可以去请 Airbnb 的人——他们亲身经历过所有这些,能帮你解决问题。所以我认为,任何没有顾问的增长团队,都是表现不佳的增长团队。因为即使是我,给这么多公司做过顾问,在这么多公司做过运营,我也不是什么都知道。每次我担任运营角色时,我都会为自己聘请顾问。因为那是学习任何东西最快的方式。而我经常看到这些团队试图自己摸索一切,手头上没有任何顾问——可以这么说。
我甚至不是在说正式的董事会。我说的甚至不是顾问委员会。你可以以承包商的身份请一个人来做你的顾问——我认为这是一个巨大的错误,尤其是在当今这个时代。因为我们的领域存在巨大的信息不对称。我们的领域里可供学习的东西很少,因为出于竞争考虑,大家都非常谨慎保守。但归根结底,很多人确实知道很多东西,知道这些东西在他们内部是如何运作的,我强烈、强烈地鼓励你不要试图自己一个人硬扛。
Lenny Rachitsky: 顺着这个思路,也有一种建议是说,别操心顾问了。你永远不知道他们是否有用。有那么多挂名的人加入你的创业公司说要帮忙,但其实帮不上忙。如果让你给创始人或团队一个建议,关于在面试顾问、寻找顾问、筛选出真正优秀的人时该怎么做,你会给出什么建议?
Elena Verna: 我确实有一个好建议。不过很多顾问可能不会喜欢。我认为在你和顾问就你正在遇到的问题做某种工作坊之前,不应该聘请他们。看看他们的实际表现。看看他们能提供什么样的信息,因为任何对自己所知有所保留的顾问,都不是你想要纳入团队的那种顾问。你要找的是一个亲身经历过这些、能够面对面和你谈论的人,能够进行艰难对话的人。能够为你提供必要案例的人。能够为你连线、帮你识别必要模式的人。所以不要只是说”哦,这个人看起来不错,让我请他做顾问”。而是说”嘿,我们先做一个工作坊。我有这个问题,我觉得你能帮我解决”。
付钱给他们,按他们的时费付那个工作坊的费用,这是应该的。看看他们如何与你的团队实际互动,然后再以长期顾问费的形式聘请他们。因为这形成了一个非常实用的面试闭环,能非常快地判断你们能否合作、他们能否与你配合,以及他们是否能为你提供价值。然后每个月都要评估那位顾问是否应该继续留在你身边。有些顾问可能只需要在公司待三个月就可以离开了,这没问题。有些可能会跟你待四五年,但每个月你都应该问一问:他们有增加价值吗?我不是说顾问应该有任何货币化的期望,比如收入归因之类的。而是你在与他们的对话中是否发现了价值?他们是否向你提供了任何有价值的东西?
Lenny Rachitsky: 这个建议太棒了。我也能理解为什么有人会说”天哪,Elena,别说这个”。但确实太有道理了。好,第九条。来吧。
第九条:过度实验的风险
Elena Verna: 我的最后一条也是我在如今的增长团队上看到太频繁的现象,尤其是增长团队。这是一个非常严重的问题。那就是增长团队过于规避风险,开始对所有东西进行测试。如果你在增长上做的每一个举措都是一个实验,那就有问题了,你应该停下来审视一下:我在做什么?为什么我对我经手的每一样东西都需要一个精确的科学测量,才能让它上线或推向市场?
这几乎像是一种病,一种让人瘫痪的病,拖慢了进度,拖慢了速度,拖慢了学习,给增长团队的产出带来了非常糟糕的后果。这有点反直觉,因为实验化本来就是增长团队做增长的方式,是他们的流程。增长团队就是要做实验的。但我也认为,对所有东西都进行实验,一旦团队开始陷入那种状态,是相当可怕的,而且很难走出来,因为他们之后会害怕做任何变更,除非他们测试过。
Lenny Rachitsky: 那你怎么找到那个平衡?我能想象听众听到这里会说,“哦对,这说得有道理”,然后继续基本上对所有东西进行测试。你有没有什么经验法则,可以告诉大家什么时候不需要测试?别担心,你不需要为此邀功。
Elena Verna: 首先,我认为人们应该多相信一点自己的直觉。数据是好的,但只有数据量足够大时数据才是好的。所以如果你是一个低流量位置,需要八个月才能得到某种答案,你真的要为了一个答案测试八个月吗?意义何在?我的经验法则是:如果我们不能在一个月内收集到足够的样本量,我们就不应该做实验,就这样。因为那样就不够快。我们应该直接做前后对比。前后对比其实相当有力,它也是一种评估影响的方式,如果不行你仍然可以回滚。但不要认为每件事都需要一个科学的论证来决定它是否应该推进。
另外,实验不能成为公司里人们做决策的唯一方式。还有很多东西依赖于你了解用户、理解市场,依赖你的大脑把所有这些点连起来,知道什么样的体验是客户想要的。如果科学数据——比如对成功概率非常精确的判定——确实重要,那当然要做,因为那可能是一个你计划做的重大策略性转向。所以它是一个数据点,用来验证所有这些额外工作是否值得投入。又或者那可能是一个超高流量的位置,即使是 0.1% 的差异也意味着数百万美元的收入。
快问快答:不值得花时间的事
Elena Verna: 除此之外,就应该放手去做、做、做。做前后对比。顺便说一下,我不是说发布了就不管了。发布之后,做 24 小时读数、7 天读数、28 天读数,甚至一年后再回来看它关联的留存或扩展数据。
但对所有东西都做测试,会让增长团队精疲力竭、瘫痪在原地。所以审视一下你的项目清单,问自己:哪里我需要精度?——这很重要,而且我能在合理时间内获得可靠结果——而哪些地方我们应该直接上。是的,那些地方也会失败,没关系。我们可以回滚,可以想办法改进。但失败无论怎样都会发生。
统计学中的显著性很有迷惑性。很多人把它当作板上钉钉的结论,而它其实只是一个方向性的数据点,告诉你可能存在一个新的分布,均值也许不同,而且有 5% 的概率你根本没达到 95% 统计显著性所声称的那个水平,却被人们当成铁板钉钉的事实——“哦,它一定会带来这么大的提升。“我只是觉得,在这个数据的时代,人们几乎不再依赖自己的基本直觉了。
Lenny Rachitsky: 很多反直觉的观点,我很喜欢。Elena,我们到了第 10 条。我知道第 10 条比较特殊,不止一条。快速快问快答环节。
Elena Verna: 第 10 条是我的快问快答环节。都是一些我看到人们花了大量时间在上面的事,让我很心疼,因为这些根本不会带来任何成果。第一条:颜色优化。看在上帝的份上,蓝色就是蓝色就是蓝色。只要它是无障碍的,只要亮度够,就行了。你不需要测试蓝色的各种色度,也不需要拿蓝色和绿色对比。选一个颜色,继续前进,请不要在这上面花时间。那是 2000 年代初的套路,现在不适用了。科技行业早就过了那个阶段。
第二条:第三方登录。很多时候我们会想,哦,如果我们加上 Google 登录、Facebook 登录、Slack 登录、Microsoft 登录,随便哪种登录方式,就能大幅提升获客。在某些情况下,第三方登录确实很重要。比如,如果你是一个面向开发者的产品,请一定要有 GitHub 登录。开发者已经在那上面有账号了,让他们直接关联,而不是重新创建一个。但是,如果你是一个效率工具产品,邮箱就够了,很长一段时间内都够用。Gmail 登录是不错,但它不会给你带来更多获客。你只是做了个权宜之计,多两个人用它而已。它不会带来增量,不会改善你的激活,不会改善你的留存。它不是增长策略,它只是你想要投入的客户体验的一部分。
第三条,快问快答:一次性邮件奇效。我们对某封即将发给某个客户群体的邮件投入太多焦虑。“天哪,它能带来多少提升?“——它永远不会带来任何提升。一封单独的邮件永远不会起作用。打开它的人太少了,平均打开率只有 25%,最好的情况也就 40% 到 50% 的打开率。点击的人更少。一封邮件永远不会产生任何效果。如果你要做邮件这件事,请把它当作一个系列来思考——关于沟通、关于它和产品内沟通如何联动。这是一整套策略,是一件完整的工程。请不要为了一封单独的邮件焦虑。永远不要测试一封邮件里的某个改动,不会有结果的。你得把整套东西都做了,看整体效果如何。单独一封邮件,永远不会有效。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这个我绝对犯过。这个真的很好。事后看来特别明显,很高兴你分享了这个。
Elena Verna: 是的。最后一条:增长团队经常过度执着于消除摩擦。因为我们减少了步骤,就会有更多人到达终点。某种程度上,如果你的产品确实造成了严重的摩擦——比如下一步该做什么让人困惑——我同意,去修复那种完成一个步骤所需的认知负荷上的摩擦。那才是你应该着力解决的摩擦。然而,仅仅减少步骤,或者砍掉功能,或者把东西简化到面目全非,以至于你连自己做什么、能做什么都失去了——这完全是失败的增长策略。所以简化可能是你在解决另一个问题时的一个手段,但如果你的路线图上有一条写着”简化新手引导”,请把它划掉。它不会有效,因为简化新手引导是一个动作。
你要解决的问题是什么?你从来不是在解决一个”简化”的问题。你面对的问题永远是:人们在这里感到困惑,人们不知道下一步去哪,或者他们在里面迷失了,或者他们没有得到足够的教育。那才是问题。简化可能是一个解决方案,但它永远不能本身成为一个问题。太多增长团队痴迷于这个我认为出自 2000 年代初的观念——“哦,简化是你能做的最大的增长黑客。去做吧。“它只是针对一个非常具体的问题集合——过于复杂——的解决方案。
Lenny Rachitsky: 哇,这条作为结尾分量很重。我觉得这会帮很多人避免浪费时间。同样,关于新手引导的建议你大概能再聊一整期播客——我知道你有这个实力。我们到了最后一项了。在进入下一部分之前,关于这个清单你还有什么想补充的吗?
Elena Verna: 没有了,我觉得我们花的时间已经够多了。可以进入下一个话题了。
Lenny Rachitsky: 不是太多,刚刚好。紧接着这个话题,我想临时调整一下计划。我们本来打算把你最喜欢的所有框架都过一遍,但我很喜欢这段对话的走向,不想让大家被信息淹没。所以一个想法是:只列出你最喜欢的增长框架,让大家自己去了解,不在每个上面花太多时间。
Elena Verna: 好,就这样。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好。
最喜欢的增长框架
Elena Verna: 好,以下是我最喜欢的增长框架清单。顺便说一下,框架对我来说不是解决方案,而是一种模式。这种模式几乎存在于每一家公司中,它是你构思的起点,帮你快速找到可能的解决方案列表,而不是绞尽脑汁去定义一个问题的本质。第一条,如果有人读过任何我写的东西或听过我的演讲,应该能猜到:增长循环(growth loops)。我认为任何思考增长的人,如果还在用漏斗思维而不是理解增长循环是什么,就错失了构建可持续增长引擎(growth engine)的能力。所以非常重要的是去思考”动作—反应”如何产生另一个动作,形成一个自我运转的飞轮(flywheel)。Reforge 上有大量相关资源,Brian Balfour、Casey Winters 和 Andrew Chen 写了很多关于这方面的内容。
Elena Verna: 强烈推荐大家去了解一下。我下一个最喜欢的增长框架其实是你们俩写的,Lenny 和 Dan,就是赛车框架(race car framework)。很多人经常很难想清楚增长举措到底包含哪些部分,哪些是长期的、哪些是短期的,它们实际上能产出多少成果。而赛车框架非常棒,因为它把不同的举措分门别类——有些是引擎,也就是那些会持续运转的增长循环(growth loops);有些是燃料,你需要往里添加的东西,比如付费营销预算;有些是涡轮加速器,比如你作为产品方可能举办的大型用户大会;还有些是润滑和优化工作,相当于往引擎里倒机油,让它真正顺畅运转。这个框架非常漂亮,我经常跟所有人聊起它。
我下一个最喜欢的增长框架来自 Bengali,它和相邻用户理论(adjacent user theory)紧密相关。我认为这个框架在思考增长的演进方面非常强大。正如我们之前谈到的,在你的增长生态系统中加入不同的增长模型(growth models)、不同的增长循环(growth loops),同时还有那些处于你的理想客户画像(ICP)之外、核心用户之外的相邻用户——增长团队如何真正把他们吸引进来,在不扩展产品市场契合点的情况下,仅仅通过优化他们的体验,就能为产品注入额外的推动力。我就讲到这三个,因为我认为它们是最有影响力的。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好。关于最后那个,Bengali 上过我的播客,如果你想深入了解相邻用户理论,我们会链接到那一期。我很喜欢刚才这几分钟——如果有人采纳了这些框架之一,学会了用这种方式思考增长,真的可能改变他们的工作方式。这是一种非常强大的心智模型,用来思考我们整场对话中讨论的所有内容。
Elena Verna: 是的,这些框架就像我心中的教堂,是我关于如何思考增长的信念体系,是我在战略层面将增长作为一种战略来把握,而不仅仅是一个战术或一个项目。
Lenny Rachitsky: Elena Verna 的教堂。太棒了。好,在结束之前,我想进入”异见角”(Contrarian Corner)——这是播客的一个固定环节,我喜欢问嘉宾:你有没有什么大多数人不认同的观点?可以说是逆向思维的观点。有什么浮现在脑海中的吗?
全职工作不是变现技能的最佳方式
Elena Verna: 我确实有一个非常逆向的观点,不过它跟增长的关系不大,更多是关于你个人的成长。我的逆向观点是:全职工作并不是将你所拥有的技能变现的最佳方式。它是每个人都应该评估和利用的一种打包方式,但太多人盲目地默认选择这种打包方式,而不去探索市场上既有的、也更适合他们的性格、兴趣和技能组合的其他选择。它就像一个人人都订阅的默认方案,而这个方案本身是有缺陷的。
Lenny Rachitsky: 哇。好。等等,我们得听你多说说。所以其他打包方式有哪些?我想我们正在购买其中一些打包方式,这些其他选择,但你觉得人们听到这番话时应该考虑什么,具体能做什么、探索什么?
Elena Verna: 我先声明,我不想泼全职工作的冷水。全职工作很棒,能提供学习的可能性,获取专业能力,而且取决于你处于哪个职业阶段,全职工作可能是你迈向下一阶段的绝对必要选择。然而,全职工作把你框在一家公司里,而这家公司在文化上、技能匹配上、抱负上、兴趣上可能并不适合你。人生太短了,你应该真正去找到适合自己的最佳变现模式——就像你为自己的业务做的那样,你也应该为自己做这件事,而不是理所当然地认为全职工作就是唯一选项。
那么其他选项有哪些?有很多。显而易见的几个:自由职业,你可以做承包商。我做了大量的顾问和咨询工作,因为我的思维方式和工作习惯——我喜欢解谜、喜欢模式匹配——横向地跨越多家公司比纵向地深入一家公司更适合我。但这并不意味着我不会接受那些纵向的深度项目来加深对某个具体领域的理解。但总的来说,在多家公司之间进行模式匹配并帮助它们增长,比只聚焦一家公司对我来说有意思得多。
还有临时性项目(interim engagements),就是有预设结束日期的合作。还有按比例参与的项目(fractional engagements),你以兼职方式参与某件事,而不是完全沉浸其中。还有其他方式,比如创建课程,创建 Newsletter 并将其变现,就像你做得那么出色一样。选项真的非常多。但人们有时候会被不稳定性的恐惧所麻痹——当你开始探索其他选项时,你没有和那一家公司签合同、每两周收到一张工资单可以依靠。但同时你可以为自己的职业创造多元化,你可以自己决定什么时候需要按下那个开关,什么时候是合适的时机去探索。但把整个职业生涯都建立在”全职是唯一出路”的假设上,我认为是很多人正在犯的一个巨大错误。
职业选择权
Lenny Rachitsky: 沿着这条线,你有一篇文章是我最喜欢的之一,讲的是增加……你真正应该做的是增加选择权(optionality)。请谈谈这个,因为我觉得这是一条非常有力的建议。
Elena Verna: 关于职业选择权应该是每个人职业旅程中终极北极星(north star)的这个建议,我非常坚定。因为很多人的目标是——我也不知道,也许我想当 VP,或者我想成为 CEO,或者我想做一个管理者,管理人。这就成了他们的北极星,然后他们开始朝这个方向努力。但很多人在到达他们心目中企业阶梯的北极星之后,发现自己极度不满意,甚至抑郁,因为那份工作太糟糕了。管理人的工作?如果你不喜欢的话,我把它给我最大的敌人都不愿意——因为你不知道自己会不会喜欢,直到你真正做了才知道。
所以我认为把一个头衔设为目标——我们中很多人确实把头衔当作目标——是非常错误的思考方式。正确的说法应该是:“嘿,我的职业目标实际上是拥有选择权,这样我可以选择我想做什么。我可以选择适合我当下生活的东西,可以选择匹配我技能的东西,适合我性格的东西,让我开心的东西。”
Elena Verna: 而要获得职业选择权,如果这是你的目标,你就会用截然不同的方式思考自己的职业发展。你不再想什么能让我拿到下一个头衔,而是开始想明年我能做什么来扩大我的选择池?这跟单纯追求更高头衔完全不同。如果你开始用这样的视角来评估机会——是否应该留在公司、是否应该在公司内部转岗——我在这家公司多待一年是增加了我的选择,还是保持不变,还是实际上可能在减少?这才是找到你最终快乐归宿和快乐工作的正确方式——那份能给你带来能量、带来幸福感的工作,而不是去追逐一个头衔,然后对随之而来的一切深感失望。
Lenny Rachitsky: 非常棒的建议,太重要了。我想补充一点,也是对大家可能产生的某种感受的一个平衡——有人可能会想,哦,我就到处跳槽去最好的公司,打造一份华丽简历。但我觉得你同时也需要建立深度和实际经验,这样你做任何事情时才有东西可以调用。比如很多人想跳去做”写 newsletter 的人”,想开播客,想做顾问——但他们还没做出什么实际成果,根本没有可以支撑你给出建议的东西,而这一点非常重要。
Elena Verna: 你必须先赢得解锁选择权的资格,而赢得这个资格通常需要在全职工作中完成。这是一个普遍真理。但到了某个阶段,你不应该只把全职工作视为唯一选择,你应该开始思考何时可以解锁新的选项并在市场上测试它们。
Lenny Rachitsky: 另外一点是,你本人就是一个很好的例证——这不是一扇单向门。你可以有全职工作,转去做别的事,再回到全职工作,做顾问,做独立内容创作者,做 newsletter 作者。你把这些都做得很好。
Elena Verna: 你应该什么都去尝试。这全都是一份选项菜单,你在人生的每个阶段挑选最适合你的那一项。永远不要说”绝不”,永远不要关上任何一扇门。绝对的。
Lenny Rachitsky: 天哪,Elena,这次太精彩了。在我们进入令人兴奋的闪电问答之前,你还有什么想分享或留给听众的吗?最后一个小观点或想法?还是说已经够多了?
Elena Verna: 没有了,我觉得我们已经讲了很多,我不想让大家信息过载。
闪电问答
Lenny Rachitsky: 开始吧。那么,我们到了令人兴奋的闪电问答环节。准备好了吗?
Elena Verna: 好了,我准备好了。
Lenny Rachitsky: 第一个问题,毫不意外。你最常向别人推荐的两三本书是什么?
Elena Verna: 好的,我刚读完一本我非常喜欢的书——这不是专业书籍,而是 Andy Weir 的《Project Hail Mary》。他是写《火星救援》的同一作者,《火星救援》还被拍成了电影。太好了,真的太好,完全放不下来。我记得好像是连续两天就读完了,强烈推荐。另一本我现在正在读的是《Body Burst》,也特别好。它实际上涉及了 AI,探讨了如何将我们的意识上传到 AI 中,以及这可能带来什么。强烈推荐,我觉得它其实比我们想象的更接近未来可能发生的事情。不过我是个科幻迷,所以主要读科幻书。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我有一个科幻推荐给你,来自 Noah Smith。我很喜欢他的 newsletter,叫 Noah Opinion,他有一份他最爱的科幻书单,我一直在按着读。有一本你可能读过的,Werner Vogel 写的《Fire Upon The Deep》。你听说过吗?
Elena Verna: 没有,没听说过。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的。它被描述为不仅仅是科幻,而是太空歌剧——那种最宏大的宇宙史诗。
Elena Verna: 我今晚就下载,加入我的书单。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这本书需要一点时间才能进入状态,风格相当独特,但你坚持读下去就会发现它非常精彩,而且 AI 在其中扮演了重要角色。
Elena Verna: 太棒了,我这就下载。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的。第二个问题,你最近最喜欢的电影或电视剧是什么?
Elena Verna: 有的。我刚看了 Netflix 上的《Beef》,太好看了。我不剧透,《Beef》,大家应该去看看。是一部限定剧,真的很好看。我还喜欢 HBO 的《Veep》,太搞笑了。整部剧我大概已经看了两遍,可能还会再看,因为每次都让我笑个不停。我觉得这其实就是我们政府运转的方式,所以我非常着迷。还有一部我很喜欢、第二季马上要出的——大家应该先把第一季补上——《Last of Us》。如果你不喜欢僵尸电影或僵尸剧,那别看。但如果僵尸和末日题材是你的菜,《Last of Us》真的很好看。
Lenny Rachitsky: 是《Last of Us》吧?还是《Last One of Us》?是《Last of Us》。
Elena Verna: 是《Last of Us》吗?
Lenny Rachitsky: 我一边聊一边在 Google,是《Last of Us》。对,应该是《The Last of Us》。
Elena Verna: 哦,《Last of Us》。好的,《Last of Us》。
Lenny Rachitsky: 你说第三季马上要出了,太激动了,我之前不知道。
Elena Verna: 对,真的好看。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的,我也很喜欢。很好的选择。下一个问题,你最近发现的、非常喜欢的产品是什么?
Elena Verna: 我最近发现有加热鞋这种东西,改变了我的生活。我的脚总是冷,有种靴子里面真的布满了加热线,我现在迷得不行。
Lenny Rachitsky: 是那种需要充电的吗?USB 插线那种?
Elena Verna: 对,我回家就插上充电,然后出门就很暖和,我觉得太神奇了。我有一件外套,也是加热外套,现在又有了鞋,就差手套了,齐了。
Lenny Rachitsky: USB 供电服装真是太棒了。顺便说一下,你住的不是硅谷,你住在东海岸对吧?
Elena Verna: 中部,我住在中部。这里最冷也就三十多华氏度(约零上一两度),但我总是觉得冷,所以能加热的东西就是我的最爱——能让我坐上去的那种。我就是那种一直蹲在灯下面烤火的猫。还有我最近刚入手了 AirPod Max 耳机,没法连到电脑上,技术问题还没解决,但我很喜欢。音质太棒了,这是我现在最着迷的新装备。
Lenny Rachitsky: 加热鞋和 AirPods,这个组合太酷了。还有两个问题。你有没有一个经常回想的、在工作生活中都觉得有用的人生座右铭?
Elena Verna: 有,其实就一条——进步优于完美(progress over perfection)。我觉得你需要……信息的速度远比我自认为完美的东西重要得多,而完美是你最终到达的结果。但进步优于完美,任何时候、任何情况下都是如此。
Lenny Rachitsky: 对一个增长负责人来说非常贴切。
Elena Verna: 没错。
结语
Lenny Rachitsky: 最后一个问题。你不但是我认识的增长领域最聪明的人之一,也是社交媒体上、尤其是 LinkedIn 上最搞笑的人之一。如果大家还没有关注你,真的应该去关注——不仅能学到东西,还会被你的内容娱乐到。你有没有自己创作的、特别引以为傲的 meme,可以描述一下?我们可以把链接放到节目笔记里。
Elena Verna: 有。不过我也想说,很多人因为我发了太多 meme 而讨厌我,他们觉得这不严肃。我其实想快速反驳一下这一点——我认为幽默是化解防备的最佳方式,它让我们能够指出每天面对的痛苦处境或两难困境,而不会让任何人感到被冒犯。因为我们都能对自己日常生活的荒诞付之一笑。一张图胜过千言万语,有时候 meme 就是传达企业世界中那些最复杂局面的最佳方式。它们也帮助我们认识到,这些处境有多么普遍——我们并不特殊,你不会因为某件事感到沮丧而觉得自己是孤独的,每个人都在经历同样的事情。这就是为什么我热爱 meme——它们帮助两边的人产生共鸣。
即便你在调侃其中一边,那边的人也会说:没错,确实是这么回事,太搞笑了。所以我非常推崇这种做法,因为我认为这其实是团结人们、讨论那些棘手问题的更好方式——如果只用文字来表达,这些问题往往根本没人愿意读。
但我最喜欢的 meme 其实是我最早创作的之一。它出自《Family Guy》,画面里有一头大象和一只企鹅站在那里,然后摩西——或者某个圣经人物——看着大象和企鹅说:“这到底是什么玩意儿?“结果就是一个长着企鹅身体和大象脑袋的混搭生物。如果你把大象想成产品,把企鹅想成营销,“这到底是什么玩意儿”就是那个可怕的产物——产品和营销硬拼在一起的怪异副产品,既不属于这边也不属于那边,却成了一个独立的存在。我觉得这是向人们描述[听不清]最好的方式了。
Lenny Rachitsky: 太贴切了。而且用语言来描述 meme 还能让人觉得好笑,这本身就很难——做得好。谢谢你来完成这个挑战。我们会在节目笔记里放这个 meme 的链接。Elena,这次对话太精彩了,再次感谢你。谢谢你成为我们节目史上第一位三度回归的嘉宾。希望未来还会有更多 Elena Verna 的节目。最后两个问题——大家想联系你、了解更多的话,在网上哪里可以找到你?听众怎样能对你有帮助?
Elena Verna: 在 LinkedIn 或者我的 Substack 上找我。Lenny,我不是在跟你竞争,但我会在自己的 Substack 上分享很多我的想法和学到的一切,地址就是 elenaverna.com。LinkedIn 是我发 meme 的地方,想笑就去那里;想从我这里学到东西,就去我的 Substack。至于怎么帮到我?告诉我你现在面临的问题。别跟我说”增长在放缓,我该怎么办”——这个太宽泛了,我帮不了你。但如果你遇到一个具体情境,对我来说往往就是写文章或做更多研究的绝佳素材。所以我特别想了解大家在想什么,这样我既能帮他们把点连成线,自己也能学到新东西。
Lenny Rachitsky: 那最好的方式是什么?是 LinkedIn 私信,还是其他……
Elena Verna: LinkedIn 私信,或者直接回复我的 Substack 邮件。它直接进入我的个人邮箱,每一封我都会读。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这个提示很好——很多人不知道,当你收到 Substack 的邮件时,直接回复就能发到作者那里。
Elena Verna: 没错。
Lenny Rachitsky: Elena,非常感谢你来参加节目。
Elena Verna: 好的,谢谢你邀请我,Lenny。
Lenny Rachitsky: 大家再见。
感谢大家的收听。如果你觉得这期节目有价值,可以在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify 或你喜欢的播客应用上订阅。也请考虑给我们评分或写评论,这对其他听众发现这个播客非常有帮助。你可以在 LennysPodcast.com 找到所有往期节目或了解更多关于这个节目的信息。下期再见。
术语表
| 原文 | 中文 |
|---|---|
| adjacent user theory | 相邻用户理论 |
| ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) | 年度经常性收入(ARR) |
| Category penetration | 品类渗透率 |
| CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) | 首席营销官(CMO) |
| cognitive load | 认知负荷 |
| Contrarian Corner | 异见角 |
| Demand gen (Demand Generation) | 需求生成(Demand Gen) |
| earned channel | 赢得渠道 |
| earned tactics | 赢得策略 |
| Fire drill | 紧急事件 |
| flywheel | 飞轮 |
| Freemium | 免费增值(Freemium) |
| Global maxima | 全局最优解 |
| Go-to-market strategy | 上市策略 |
| growth engine | 增长引擎 |
| growth frameworks | 增长框架 |
| Growth hacks | 增长黑客 |
| growth loop | 增长循环 |
| growth model | 增长模型 |
| growth pod | 增长小组 |
| ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) | 理想客户画像(ICP) |
| J curve | J 型曲线 |
| KPI (Key Performance Indicator) | 关键绩效指标(KPI) |
| Law of Shitty Clickthroughs | 垃圾点击率定律(Law of Shitty Clickthroughs) |
| North star metric | 北极星指标 |
| one-off email / one email wonders | 一次性邮件 |
| optionality | 选择权 |
| owned channel | 自有渠道 |
| Product market fit | 产品市场契合点 |
| Product-led growth | 产品主导增长(PLG) |
| progress over perfection | 进步优于完美 |
| race car framework | 赛车框架 |
| S-curve | S 型曲线 |
| Sean Test | Sean Test(Sean Ellis 提出的产品市场契合度测试) |
| second horizon | 第二增长前沿 |
| Self-serve revenue | 自助服务收入 |
| sharing loop | 分享循环 |
| social resellers | 社交转售商 |
| third party auth | 第三方登录 |
| top of the funnel | 漏斗顶部 |
| user-generated content | 用户生成内容 |
| virality | 病毒式传播 |
| word of mouth loop | 口碑循环 |
此文档由 AI 分片翻译(translate_long_document)