I think it depends a little bit ona the company's d and a. So if they are at a place where they really understand a analytical, experimentation based approaches, then maybe it's easier to just build it as part of the product. Tin, a, if you need toike, prove that this works and evangelize it, you might on a stand alone team where you go get a growth person. Ah, so i think that's probably like the right starting point. I also think different areas of the funnel lend themselves to different type approaches. Some start very engineering and product heavy from the start. Conversion and retention, those types of things.
Dan Hockenmaier is the founder of the growth strategy firm Basis One. Prior to Basis One he was the Director of Growth Marketing at Thumbtack. You can learn more at BasisOne.com.
Gustaf Alströmer is a Partner at YC. Prior to YC he was the Product Lead for Growth at Airbnb.
You can find Dan on Twitter @danhockenmaier and Gustaf is @gustaf.
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.
Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200), twice a year.
Learn more about YC and apply for funding here: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/
***
Topics
00:00 - Intro
00:50 - Dan's most unpopular advice
1:45 - What growth strategies do people jump on too soon?
2:20 - Questions Dan asks a company he's advising
3:50 - Traits Dan looks for in early growth hires
6:30 - How product and growth are tied together
11:30 - Good/bad learnings from Facebook's growth team
14:00 - A/B testing
17:00 - Retention and other metrics
20:45 - The importance of experimentation
23:45 - Getting ideas for A/B tests then choosing which to do
25:00 - Advice for employees who want to get a growth program going
29:00 - B2B vs consumer growth tactics
34:00 - Pricing experiments
35:30 - Paid marketing
39:30 - Launching in new markets
40:15 - Hiring for marketing
43:45 - Metrics for marketing hires
45:45 - Toni asks - Why did Airbnb grow so fast?
48:45 - Step function growth changes for companies that already had scale
49:55 - Michael Savage asks - It would be great to discuss growth into new regions for example Africa and UAE. What would their approach be, how does it differ from region to region, culture to culture?
52:30 - Justin LaRosa asks - What are some of the most common drivers of viral growth?
55:20 - Hiring a growth agency vs building your own team
58:20 - How do you think about growth in the context of improving humanity?