Why ‘Growth’ Isn’t Just a Fancy Word for Marketing (with Leah Tharin)
Mostly Growth
Intro
Hosts introduce the episode and welcome guest Leah Tharin, setting the stage for a discussion on growth, AI, and product strategy.
CJ, Kyle, and Ben sit down with product-growth leader Leah Tharin to unpack why “growth” is the connective tissue between marketing traffic and product revenue, how a new middle segment of visitors just wants product information (not onboarding), and why interactive demos and ICP-focused metrics beat vanity signups. They get into AI-era realities—LLMs ingesting messy web data, SEO-style gaming creeping into AI search, and why you must structure content for machines without drowning it in noise. Leah shares practical playbooks for segmenting dashboards by ICP, qualifying intent before trials, and building moats through workflow depth and integrations. They close with Business Blunders (cloud outages stranding smart beds), a “potentially reliable at 2 a.m.” wealth thought experiment, and Pricing in the Real World (when shrinking markets get more profitable and why LEGO’s premium strategy still
Timestamps:
00:00 Preview and Intro
01:00 Theme and Show Intro by Ben
01:23 Welcome and Guest Intro: Leah Tharin joins Mostly Growth
02:58 Halloween banter and European vs. US traditions
04:03 Europe’s AI/startup scene and data protection realities
07:34 Why founders move HQs to the US; SF gravity for AI startups
08:15 EU hubs, language barriers, and multilingual products
09:45 What’s working in growth right now? Setting definitions
10:07 “Growth is just marketing, right?” — Leah’s framework
12:54 Trials vs. info-seekers; fix onboarding for two intents
16:06 Prompt-box homepages and brand vs. explanation debt
19:46 AI search, poisoning, and content architecture limits
22:32 What to do now: simplify metrics and segment by ICP
23:12 Building ICP vs. non-ICP dashboards that guide teams
25:37 Use interactive demos; qualify intent before trials
34:32 Snake-eating-its-tail data and model bias in training sets
35:43 Founder advice: bet on problem-obsessed teams and workflows
38:41 Business Blunders: AWS outage and “smart bed” fail
39:46 Potentially Reliable at 2 a.m.: The “missing billionaires” thought experiment
44:06 Pricing in the Real World: shrinking markets, rising margins
45:10 LEGO pricing and premium positioning rant
49:24 Events on a boat: captive audiences and sponsorships
50:45 Credits and Sign-off
Links:
https://www.leahtharin.com/p/why-ai-cannot-simulate-your-customers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Missing_Billionaires
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/06/12/how-to-invest-your-enormous-inheritance
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/10/26/the-counterintuitive-economics-of-smoking
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