Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva)

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Jun 18, 2023

Melissa Tan, a growth expert with a stellar track record at Dropbox, Canva, and Webflow, shares her insights on building high-performing teams. She discusses the importance of first-principles thinking and how it can drive innovation and creativity. Tan also emphasizes effective hiring strategies, including fostering mentorship and clear communication within teams. From her experiences at Dropbox, she reveals key pitfalls companies face in growth strategies and highlights the significance of a strong culture of ownership and collaboration.

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ANECDOTE

Dropbox's Growth Experimentation

Dropbox initially struggled with growth experiments due to a lack of user-centricity and over-reliance on generic best practices.
Iterating on execution and focusing on user needs led to later success.

INSIGHT

Dropbox's Hiring Success

Dropbox succeeded by hiring for first-principles thinking and collaborative, humble personalities.
This combination fueled innovation in product-led growth and sales motions.

INSIGHT

Product-Led vs. Sales-Led Growth

Product-led growth works best for intuitive, viral products with a low learning curve, like Dropbox or Miro.
Sales motions become important as larger clients demand enterprise features or when a product isn't inherently bottom-up.

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