20 Growth The 3 Levers to Successful Growth Models, The 3 Types of Growth Hires Startups Need To Know, The 3 Stages All Successful Growth Teams Need To Go Through with Elena Verna, Advisor @ MongoDB and HP

In this episode of 20 Growth, host Harry Stebbings interviews Elena Werner, a seasoned growth expert with a track record of scaling growth organizations. Elena shares her journey from an analyst at a grocery chain to leading growth at SurveyMonkey and advising companies like Miro, HP, and MongoDB. She emphasizes the importance of data-driven decision-making, the distinction between product and growth, and the crucial roles of acquisition, monetization, and retention in growth models. Elena also discusses the pitfalls of hiring a growth team too early, the value of internal talent development, and the need for CEOs to be involved in growth strategy. She advises against conflating growth with marketing and praises WHOOP's growth strategy in the fitness tracker industry. The episode also features promotional segments for Brex, Stripe, and Pendo Free.

• 20 Growth is a new segment of the 20 media platform.
• The series interviews ten of the best growth minds.
• It focuses on tips, tactics, strategies, and lessons for starting, scaling, and maintaining growth teams.
• Elena Werner is a guest known for her expertise in starting and scaling growth organizations.
• Elena's background includes roles at SurveyMonkey and Miro, along with advisory positions at HP, MongoDB, Netlify Maze, and others.
• Casey Winters at Eventbrite introduced Elena Werner to the show.

This is 20 growth, a new segment of the expanding 20 media platform. And if you did not hear our first with Casey Winters at Eventbrite last month, then check that out. But 20 growth is the series that interviews ten of the best growth minds, uncovering their tips, tactics, strategies and lessons on what it takes to start, scale and maintain growth teams today, providing you with a benchmark for how the very best growth leaders think and act.

The quote sets the stage for the series' purpose, which is to explore the insights of leading growth experts to help others in the field understand the best practices for developing successful growth strategies.

• Elena Werner never planned to become a head of growth or growth advisor.
• She began her career as an analyst for a grocery chain's marketing team.
• Elena felt stifled in the non-tech environment due to its slow pace.
• She found her first tech job on Craigslist and pursued SurveyMonkey for eight months before being hired.
• At SurveyMonkey, she progressed from data analyst to director, briefly tried product marketing, and then moved into growth.
• Her entry into the growth field was a combination of luck, persistence, and seizing opportunities.

Well, let me just say is that I've never imagined to be where I am right now. I've never dreamed of being head of growth or doing growth advising that I am doing right now. So all of it was just a stroke of luck and opportunities uncovering very randomly throughout my career.

Elena Werner's quote highlights her unexpected path to becoming a growth leader, emphasizing the role of chance and opportunity in her career progression.

• Growth is distinct from product development; it focuses on achieving maximum distribution through a growth model.
• The growth model includes three main levers: customer acquisition, monetization, and retention.
• Growth should not be conflated with product market fit; they are separate concepts.
• A growth model can be led by marketing, sales, product, or a combination thereof.
• The head of growth is responsible for the growth model, not just marketing or product.
• A successful growth model is authentic to the business and creates predictable, sustainable, and defensible growth.

Now, what is growth model? Growth model. There's three main levers that fall into growth model, which is how do you acquire customers, how do you monetize your customers, and how do you retain those customers.

This quote from Elena Werner defines the growth model and its components, which are critical for the distribution and success of a product.

• Starting a growth team too early, before product-market fit, is a mistake.
• Founding teams should not outsource growth responsibility to a separate team prematurely.
• Growth pressure should be shared and collaborative among initial team members.
• A growth team should be formed when the company is ready internally and understands the value of growth.
• The biggest mistakes are hiring for growth too early and only looking externally instead of nurturing internal talent.

So I believe that starting growth team too early is a problem. If you don't have a product market fit, what are you growing?

Elena advises against forming a growth team before establishing product-market fit, as it can lead to misallocated resources and efforts.

• The CEO or leadership team must understand and communicate the value of a growth team.
• There must be top-down buy-in for the creation of a growth team to be successful.
• The responsibility for growth education lies with the company's leadership rather than the growth team itself.

CEO or the leadership team do not understand the value that growth team is meant to provide and what their success looks like and what their goals are. It's going to get rejected by the system. There has to be buy in, top down if you're creating growth team.

Elena emphasizes that the responsibility for understanding and advocating for the growth team's value falls on the company's leadership, ensuring organizational alignment and support.

• 3210 discusses the challenges of hiring a head of growth with previous successes.
• Internal talent nurturing is emphasized as a valuable alternative to external hiring.
• The cost and effectiveness of hiring an external head of growth are questioned.
• 3210 recommends a balanced growth team composed of both internal and external members.

"Not recognizing that you can potentially nurture talent internally is just missed opportunities throughout the entire time." This quote highlights the oversight companies may have in not considering the development of internal candidates for growth roles, suggesting that internal talent can be a valuable resource.

"But don't just create an external growth team only from external hires. I think that's just going to lead to a rejection from the system." 3210 advises against forming a growth team solely with external hires, implying that such a team might face resistance within the company's existing culture.

• 3210 identifies common hiring mistakes for growth teams, emphasizing mindset and superpower mismatches.
• The importance of a data-driven approach and adaptability in growth team members is stressed.
• Hiring based on the wrong characteristics can negatively impact the growth team's effectiveness.

"If you people are not data driven, and they're all intuition driven...then what value is that going to add to create predictable and sustainable competitively defensible systems?" This quote underscores the necessity for growth team members to be data-driven to build systems that are predictable and competitive.

• 3210 discusses techniques for assessing whether candidates are data-driven and adaptable.
• Specific questions and scenarios are used to determine candidates' analytical and strategic thinking abilities.
• Qualitative questions can reveal candidates' preferences for stability versus flexibility.

"I want them to understand how to actually ask the right questions to unpack that data trend, and then how would they think about creating a strategy or tactics to reverse that data trend?" 3210 explains the importance of candidates' ability to analyze data trends and develop actionable strategies in response.

• 3210 describes three profiles within growth teams: innovators, settlers, and optimizers.
• Each profile has specific roles and strengths in the growth process.
• Founders should not rush to hire a head of growth without first validating their growth hypothesis with a settler.

"I believe, for example, that it's founder's responsibility to come up with original hypothesis for growth model." 3210 emphasizes the founder's role in formulating the initial growth hypothesis before hiring specific growth roles.

• 3210 points out the misconception founders have about needing a head of growth.
• The importance of understanding the company's growth model before hiring is highlighted.
• Outsourcing the growth model to an external head of growth is cautioned against.

"You literally, you want to outsource your growth model to some third party person that you don't know that you just interviewed and you asked a couple of questions, you spent an hour, two, maybe 3 hours with, and you outsourcing your entire growth model to them." 3210 criticizes the practice of hastily hiring a head of growth without thorough understanding and vetting, comparing it to outsourcing product-market fit.

• 3210 advises against structuring the hiring process based on symptoms of slowing growth without understanding the underlying issues.
• Hiring the wrong type of growth professional, such as a growth marketer when the issue is product-led, is identified as a common mistake.
• Understanding the specific friction points in the growth system is essential before hiring.

"What is growth marketer? That is usually, by the way, just performance marketers that work on organic and paid channels is going to do with that." 3210 cautions against hiring a growth marketer without considering whether their skills align with the company's specific growth challenges.

• Discusses the importance of addressing fundamental issues affecting growth rather than superficial solutions.
• Emphasizes the need for hiring appropriate roles for specific user experience issues.
• Highlights the potential mismatch and failure when hiring a growth marketer for a product-led company.

"Solving the core problem." "It's just like sticky tape on top of the cuff."

The quotes suggest that merely applying quick fixes, akin to using sticky tape, does not address the underlying issues that are hindering growth. It emphasizes the necessity of solving the foundational problem to achieve sustainable growth.

• Identifies common mistakes founders make during the onboarding process of growth teams.
• Stresses the importance of having a data team ready for the growth team.
• Discusses the unrealistic expectation of immediate wins from newly hired growth teams.

"Where do most founders go wrong on the onboarding process for growth teams?"

This question introduces the topic of potential pitfalls in the onboarding process for growth teams, setting the stage for a discussion on best practices and common errors.

• Differentiates between being data-informed and data-driven.
• Explains the necessity of understanding key metrics beyond revenue.
• Describes the stages of data literacy and the importance of correlating KPIs to business levers.

"You have to be able to be data informed... It has to be something around acquisition, number of new accounts... being data driven... I am able to explain fluctuations and trends."

These quotes outline the two stages of data literacy: being 'data informed' involves knowing which metrics are predictive of revenue, and 'data driven' refers to the ability to understand and act on the trends and fluctuations within those metrics.

• Discusses the three stages of a growth team's development: running experiments, learning from them, and achieving wins.
• Emphasizes the importance of not rushing to wins without a foundation of learning.
• Warns against setting expectations for immediate success, which can lead to burnout.

"The main tool of any growth team is experimentation... learn how to walk, learn how to actually set up, run quick tests... learn how to learn... then we start winning."

This quote explains the process and stages that a growth team should go through, highlighting experimentation as a key tool and the sequential steps of experimenting, learning, and then achieving wins.

• Discusses the concept of pre-mortems versus post-mortems in growth initiatives.
• Advocates for proactive identification of potential issues before launching tests or initiatives.
• Suggests pre-mortems as a way to prepare for and mitigate potential problems.

"Pre mortems are far more effective than post mortems... you come up with all of the scenarios of things that can just go downhill and you come up with the workarounds."

The quote promotes the practice of pre-mortems, which involves anticipating and planning for potential problems before they occur, as a more effective approach than analyzing failures after the fact.

• Highlights the negative impact of growth teams claiming sole credit for wins.
• Advises against hoarding wins and suggests collaboration with product teams.
• Recommends sharing successes and enabling the company rather than dominating ideation.

"Don't do that. Now. What is the opposite of that is sharing the wins... really being an enabler to the company as opposed to whole source of all of the ideation."

The quote advises against growth teams taking full credit for successful experiments, advocating instead for a collaborative approach with product teams to foster a positive dynamic within the company.

• Touches on the dynamics between growth teams, CEOs, and product teams.
• Discusses the challenges of ownership and credit for growth achievements.
• Implies the need for a balanced relationship where contributions are recognized without overshadowing teamwork.

"I had a leadership team come in and give me a target that I need to hit. I went and I figured out how to do it. Of course, the natural thing is to take ownership of that win because we did it."

This quote reflects the tension between achieving targets set by leadership and the desire to take ownership of the success, highlighting the complex dynamics that can arise between growth teams and company leadership.

• CEOs must be involved in the development and evolution of the company's growth model for long-term success.
• A great product alone is not sufficient; an effective growth model that drives acquisition, monetization, and retention is essential.
• Growth is a major pillar of overall business strategy and should not be ignored.
• The head of growth's involvement in the leadership team depends on the company's specific needs and the skills of existing leaders like CMOs, CPOs, or CROs.
• Growth must be part of strategic decision-making to ensure sustainable and predictable business growth.

"So I think if CEO is not involved in the development and evolution of growth model, I question of how successful the company will be in the long term."

This quote emphasizes the critical role of CEO involvement in shaping the growth model, which is fundamental to a company's long-term success.

• Initially, growth teams may rely on intuition due to the lack of data.
• It's important to start working on perceived issues even before all the data is available.
• Using qualitative feedback, such as user interviews, can guide early growth efforts.
• While striving to be data-driven, it's acceptable to act on patterns and beliefs from customer feedback before quantitative data is fully established.

"I think any new growth team has to initially rely on intuition or just overall feeling within the company of what needs to be worked on."

This quote reflects the reality that growth teams often start with intuition and general insights before they have comprehensive data to guide their decisions.

• Personalization and user engagement within the product's ecosystem are crucial.
• User flow optimizations, such as onboarding and monetization flows, continue to be important.
• Tactics like referral programs and user-generated content remain effective for sustainable growth.

"Creating a lot of those referral loops or user generated content and figuring out how to engage your user base in the ecosystem around your product to create that sustainable system is all great work."

This quote highlights the ongoing importance of engaging users and creating a community around a product as a tactic for sustainable growth.

• Certain color optimizations in user interface design are becoming less impactful.
• Walkme tours are less favored as a long-term growth tactic; fixing UX issues is preferred.
• Overly simplified onboarding processes are no longer as effective; customers are willing to provide more information for a better experience.

"Customers are becoming a lot more sophisticated. I really don't see a lot of benefit coming out of that."

This quote suggests that as customers become more sophisticated, simplistic tactics like basic color optimizations are no longer as beneficial for growth.

• Growth is about identifying sustainable and repeatable patterns.
• Advising other companies can provide additional perspectives and data points.
• Seeing the broader picture (the forest) rather than getting lost in immediate challenges (the trees) is vital for strategic thinking.

"Growth is all about patterns. Growth is all about frameworks that are sustainable and repeatable."

This quote advises growth leaders to focus on establishing patterns and frameworks that can be applied consistently for sustainable growth.

• Growth is often mistakenly conflated with marketing.
• There is a lack of understanding that growth can be driven by different functions like marketing, sales, or product.
• The distinction between marketing and growth needs to be better recognized within the industry.

"If you're a recruiter and you're reaching out to me with CMO, or even if you offer, or if you even a founder that is reaching out to me with CMO, offer seems like you don't understand the difference between marketing and growth."

This quote expresses frustration with the common misconception that marketing roles are equivalent to growth roles, highlighting the need for clearer differentiation in the industry.

• WHOOP's growth strategy, particularly its recurring revenue model for a wearable device, is impressive.
• The ability to create a sustainable business model in the fitness tracker industry is noteworthy.

"I'm blown away by their growth tactics. I don't know if they realize what they're doing or not, but their ability to create recurring revenue out of a wearable device is fascinating."

This quote praises WHOOP's growth strategy for its innovative approach to generating recurring revenue in the wearable technology space.