Welcome to Growthmates — the place to connect with inspiring leaders to help you grow yourself and your product. Here you can learn how companies like Dropbox, Adobe, Amplitude, Canva, and many more are building excellent products and growth culture. Subscribe to get all episodes right to your inbox on katesyuma.substack.com.

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In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Janie Lee, Head of Product at Loom.

We explored the evolution of Loom’s growth strategy, especially post-acquisition by Atlassian.

By the end of this episode, you can learn how to start performing as a new leader and build the Growth function, how to hire for Growth and Core product roles, and my favorite insight about the most impactful experiment for Loom in the last year.

If you find this show valuable, please share it with one of your colleagues or friends — it gives huge support to continue creating it. To receive all episodes right in your inbox — subscribe to katesyuma.substack.com

This episode is supported by Appcues — the platform that helps you design, deploy, and test captivating onboarding experiences.

Appcues created the Product Adoption Academy to help you level up your product adoption for free. Check out the template that I created to help companies uncover meaningful improvements. Find an example of Dropbox Onboarding inside and apply it to review any growth flows: appcues.com/growthmates

Key highlights from this episode:

* Strategic Use of Product Critiques at Loom: Janie Lee describes how Loom conducts strategic product reviews to evaluate high-stakes projects, using tools like Loom for efficient communication and decision-making, highlighting the importance of structured feedback.

* Building Loom's Growth Team: Janie narrates the evolution of the growth team at Loom, starting from small-scale initiatives to establishing a dedicated growth team focused on customer journeys and business metrics, demonstrating the iterative process of growth strategy implementation.

* Data-Informed Culture and Customer Insights: She discusses embedding a data-inforemd decision-making culture at Loom by creating a growth dashboard and prioritizing customer insights, which align product development closely with user needs and business objectives.

* Core and Growth Teams: discussing differences in hiring approach and how both Core and Growth collaborated on some initiatives at Loom.

* Most successful Growth experiment at Loom in the last 12 months: We discussed a significant growth experiment at Loom that adjusted anonymous viewer interactions, showcasing the trade-offs between enhancing user engagement and satisfying content creators, reflecting the nuanced decisions involved in growth strategy.

Listen now and subscribe on your favorite platforms — Apple, Spotify, or watch on YouTube (new!).

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Where to find Kate Syuma, Growth Advisor (ex-Miro):

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ekaterina-syuma/

* Newsletter: katesyuma.substack.com

Where to find our guests:

* Janie Lee, Head of Product at Loom: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janiejlee/

What we’ve covered in this episode:

[01:11] A Day in the Life of a Product Director

[03:27] Strategic Product Critiques

[04:55] The Joy of Management

[06:20] Path to Leadership

[08:30] Early Days at Loom

[11:33] Data-Driven Insights

[19:39] Significant Impact Changes

[23:01] Product-Led Acquisition Insights

[24:52] Core vs. Growth Product Teams

[28:34] Successful Partnerships in Product Development

[31:15] Hiring for Product and Growth

[37:31] Adapting to Acquisition by Atlassian: Growth Perspectives

[41:34] Maintaining a Growth Mindset in Large Organizations

[44:11] Navigating the New Corporate Landscape

[46:38] Lightning Round: Unexpected Inspirations

Resources Referenced:

* How to make an impact in your first 90 days by Kyle Poyar on Lenny's Newsletter:

* Various Reforge courses: https://www.reforge.com/

If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to share it with your colleagues and like-minded friends. For sponsorship and other inquiries reach out to ekaterinasyuma@gmail.com.

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#311 The Day Of The Jackal, The Old Man, and Citadel: Honey Bunny. With guests Billy Crystal, Eddie Redmayne & Lashana Lynch