In a revealing conversation on "20 Growth," host Harry Stebbings discusses the intricacies of growth strategy with V Sagal, VP of Consumer Product at Reddit. Sagal, with a background as Head of Growth at Reddit and an eight-year tenure at Zynga, shares his journey into the growth space, which began serendipitously as a software engineer. He emphasizes the importance of deeply understanding user motivations, citing an eye-opening experience at Zynga that taught him the value of user-centric product management. Sagal also reflects on the mistakes made while building growth teams, such as not hiring or firing quickly enough and failing to integrate with existing company culture. He advocates for hiring experienced growth leaders post-product-market fit and underscores the necessity of equipping them with the tools to analyze, strategize, and execute effectively. Sagal's insights extend to angel investing, where he underscores the importance of investing in talent over product, and praises the bottoms-up SaaS model, exemplified by companies like Slack, for its impressive growth strategy.
Welcome back. This is 20 growth with me, Harry Stebings.
The quote is the opening line of the show, setting the stage for the discussion on growth strategies with industry leaders.
Now in this monthly show, we sit down with the world's best growth leaders to discuss why, when and how you may need to start and scale your growth team, taking lessons from their immense experiences scaling some of the best.
The quote highlights the purpose of the show, which is to learn from the experiences of top growth leaders like V Sagal.
I also want to say huge thank you. This show would not have happened without Casey Winters, an incredible leader in the growth world and so appreciate all you did to make this one happen, my friend.
Harry Stebings expresses gratitude to Casey Winters for his contribution to the show, emphasizing his significance in the growth sector.
Trip Actions was born out of the realization that business travel should be easy.
The quote is part of an advertisement for TripActions, highlighting the service's goal to simplify business travel.
Did you know that 68% of workers say a hybrid workplace is their preference?
This quote introduces the topic of hybrid workplaces and the preference of workers for this model, setting the stage for the discussion of tools like Robin.
Yeah, I mean, mostly by accident, to be honest.
V Sagal describes his unexpected entry into the field of growth, which was not a premeditated career path.
Zynga at that time, was basically this school for product management.
V Sagal compares his time at Zynga to an educational experience in product management, indicating the valuable lessons he learned there.
Really get to know your user in and out. Who are they? What are their motivations? Why do they use your product?
The quote emphasizes the necessity of comprehensively understanding users to create products that truly meet their needs.
Growth really should be renamed to something like value connection.
V Sagal shares his perspective on growth, aligning with the idea that it is about connecting users to the value offered by a product, rather than just increasing numbers.
"It's really about value connection, not about value creation."
This quote emphasizes the distinction between making new features (value creation) and making existing features more accessible to users (value connection).
"You didn't create anything new in the product. There's no new value being created. What you're doing is you're trying to organize your product to better connect it to the user coming in so that they retain, engage, et cetera, et cetera."
The speaker clarifies that value connection is about optimizing the user's experience with what already exists in the product, not introducing new features.
"I think ideally you want to do it post product market fit."
This quote suggests that companies should wait until they have product-market fit before making their first growth hire, as the product's value must be established first.
"Ahead of growth is really a title that has shown up in the last few years, but really all it is is a director of product or vp of product who works on value connection."
The speaker points out that a head of growth is essentially a product leader with a focus on value connection, indicating the type of professional experience to look for in a candidate.
"Probably 30% to 40% of my time in those early years should have just been hiring."
The speaker reflects on the importance of dedicating a significant portion of time to hiring to avoid overloading oneself and hindering scalability.
"You need to find the diamonds in the rough, but you do need someone, I think, who is senior enough and who has some experience wearing all those different hats because it is pretty challenging."
This quote suggests that while finding hidden talent is valuable, experience and the ability to manage diverse responsibilities are crucial for a growth leader.
"How would you think about driving growth for Reddit? That literally was the interview."
This quote describes a focused interview question aimed at understanding a candidate's process and strategic thinking around growth.
"You want someone who can actually walk you through that end to end process with a lot of clarity."
The speaker highlights the importance of a candidate's ability to articulate a clear process for driving growth, rather than just presenting ideas.
"I would do a lot of back channeling there. So I've done this for people where a lot of times when you're back channeling, you only talk to folks who were their previous managers. But I think it's actually equally important to talk to people who are on their team."
This quote explains the importance of back channeling in the hiring process, emphasizing the need to consult with a candidate's former teammates, not just managers, to get a comprehensive view of their capabilities.
"You want someone who can take a high level ambiguous problem and just break it down for you and be really articulate about what exactly their process is and how they're going to solve the problem."
This quote highlights the importance of a candidate's ability to deconstruct complex problems and clearly communicate their problem-solving process during an interview.
"You want them to feel like they have skin in the game. You want them to feel like this is their company, that they have ownership, and that they could have a material impact on their lives if they do a great job, but you want to pay them enough to where you are setting them up to succeed."
The quote discusses the rationale behind offering equity compensation to key hires, emphasizing the need for them to feel invested in the company and motivated to contribute to its success.
"So in some ways, yeah, your North Star metric doesn't really change, but your leading indicators, they probably change a lot depending upon what you've tested, what you've learned."
This quote clarifies that while the North Star metric remains constant, the indicators that lead to it are dynamic and can change as the company evolves and gains new insights.
"Give them access to data, give them a laptop. Hopefully they have a team that they can work with. And the beginning, all you need is a few engineers."
This quote suggests that a minimal and efficient onboarding process with the necessary resources is sufficient for a competent growth hire to begin their role effectively.
"The right candidate just wants to get going. They want to launch something their second week there. They should just be itching to execute and launching things that is the right candidate."
The quote emphasizes the importance of a proactive approach in a new hire, indicating that a strong candidate should be action-oriented and ready to implement ideas early on.
"As I mentioned in the beginning, you just need a few engineers who can collaborate, who can work with this person full time, much better than contractors or part time again, you want people who have skin in the game."
This quote underscores the necessity of giving the new head of growth a dedicated team of engineers to foster a committed and effective working relationship.
"Why did you not put up a dialogue in front of users asking them, hey, do you want a faster board to play on, yes or no? We never did that."
The quote reflects on a missed opportunity to validate a product idea with users before development, highlighting the importance of user feedback in the ideation process.
"It was about building a culture where everyone felt ownership and everyone had a voice and everyone had power to be able to come up with the idea that could take us out of it."
The quote speaks to the importance of fostering a culture where all employees feel responsible for the company's success and are empowered to contribute solutions.
"For me, it was about, we have ten different ways of validating ideas. For each idea. We chose one of those ten, and the key was that each of those would be just really fast, simple, easy, and ultimately would save us a lot of engineering time."
This quote describes the diverse methods available for idea validation and emphasizes the importance of choosing the most efficient approach to save time and resources.
"Every single discipline needs to have a seat at the table because they have shared accountability to the results, and this is an instrument for accountability."
The quote explains the significance of including representatives from every discipline in product reviews to maintain a collective responsibility for outcomes and learnings.
"So when I was at Zynga, we did them weekly. It was just a weekly product cadence... For Reddit, it's actually more like once a month."
This quote illustrates the difference in product review cadences between companies and industries, with some requiring more frequent reviews than others based on the business dynamics.
"At Zynga, we had this elaborate, you would do slides and people would spend hours and pull all nighters doing it. We got rid of all of that at Reddit, and it was very informal."
This quote highlights the contrast between Zynga's and Reddit's methods for product discussion, emphasizing Reddit's shift towards a more streamlined and discussion-focused approach.
"But ultimately, talent is everything. So for me, when I do angel investing, I'm not so much interested in what exactly is the product, what exactly is the market. But if I really believe in the person and the talent, I know they'll figure it out and I'm investing more in them and less in the product."
This quote encapsulates the speaker's investment philosophy, which prioritizes the talent and potential of the individual over the specifics of the product or market.
"I invested in a hotel in San Francisco, which is a horrible investment. [...] Ultimately, if I was going by my rubric of, like, who am I investing in? What's the value of the product, I would not have invested."
The quote reflects on a personal investment mistake, highlighting the importance of sticking to established investment criteria and not being swayed by superficial aspects.
"That broad social network is just going to be about interests, and it's going to be less about identity, more and more."
This quote predicts the future trajectory of social networks, indicating a shift away from individual identity towards community and interest-based interactions.
"How we fuck up is instead of doubling down where we are strong, we try to cover our weaknesses, or we look at what's happening with other social networks and we try to follow."
This quote identifies the potential pitfall for Reddit, which would be deviating from its core strength and trying to emulate other social networks.
"But the difference is Reddit is the deepest, most thoughtful discussion. That's not happening anywhere else."
The quote emphasizes Reddit's competitive advantage in providing deep and thoughtful discussions, which is not replicated on other platforms.
"No, I think we have a perception problem."
This brief quote acknowledges the challenge Reddit faces with its public image and the need to reshape perceptions to align with its community and content strengths.
"Just serving your customer a great experience has not changed."
The quote reinforces the timeless importance of providing a great customer experience as a fundamental aspect of growth.
"I think a lot of SEO stuff is just dying a pretty quick death."
This quote highlights the decline of certain SEO practices, suggesting a shift towards more ethical and sustainable SEO strategies.
"You need to find not just smart people, but the kind of person that you need for this exact job."
This quote advises on the critical aspect of hiring for growth teams, emphasizing the need for a deliberate approach to match the job's specific requirements.
"I mean, I'm a huge fan of the bottoms up SaaS model."
This quote expresses admiration for the bottoms-up approach to SaaS growth, exemplified by Slack's strategy.
"The first time I used TikTok, they drop you straight onto a video. No sign up, nothing."
The quote describes the speaker's impressive first-hand experience with TikTok's user onboarding process, emphasizing its effectiveness in engaging new users immediately.