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Career frameworks, A/B testing mistakes, counterintuitive onboarding tips, selling to developers | Laura Schaffer (VP of Growth at Amplitude)

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Mar 9, 2023

Guest

Laura Schaffer

Laura Schaffer, VP of Growth at Amplitude, shares her journey from leading teams at Twilio to her current role. She discusses how customer insights have powered her career growth, and reveals surprising A/B testing strategies that boosted conversion rates. Laura emphasizes the importance of balancing qualitative and quantitative data in decision-making while tackling the challenges of user onboarding. She also dives into the intricacies of selling to developers, advocating for a deeper understanding of user needs in growth strategies.

01:21:13

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Episode notes

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ADVICE

Carve Your Own Path

Carve your own career path and propose new opportunities.
Don't wait for managers to create the perfect path for you.

question_answer

ANECDOTE

Bandwidth Growth Role

Laura Schaffer transitioned from sales to a growth-focused role at Bandwidth by identifying customer pain points.
She noticed customers repeatedly asking the same questions and suggested putting answers online.

insights

INSIGHT

Executive Insight Gap

Executive teams often lack direct customer interaction, missing valuable insights.
Sharing customer insights with leadership can boost your career.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Celebrating New Beginnings in Growth Leadership

03:58 • 2min

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Empowering Career Growth Through Customer Insights

05:51 • 14min

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Experimentation in User Onboarding

20:21 • 21min

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Balancing Data and Instinct in Business Growth Strategies

41:26 • 3min

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Navigating Growth Experimentation

44:43 • 10min

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Transforming User Engagement through Simplified Onboarding

54:43 • 3min

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Navigating Between Growth Strategies

57:17 • 19min

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Enhancing Product Development and User Insights with Innovative Tools

01:16:42 • 2min

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Connecting and Supporting Through Career Challenges

01:19:00 • 2min

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Brought to you by Public—Invest in stocks, treasuries, crypto, and more | Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments | Writer—Generative AI for the enterprise

—

Laura Schaffer is the brand-new VP of Growth at Amplitude. Prior to this role, she spent over 10 years leading product management and growth teams at Twilio, Bandwidth, and Rapid. In today’s episode, we talk about the role of experimentation and data in growth, and Laura shares stories of big wins from her time leading growth teams. She explains how customer insights helped her uplevel her career and how she (surprisingly) thinks about qualitative versus quantitative data. We wrap up our conversation by discussing where the best ideas come from and what you need to know if you’re selling to developers.

Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/career-frameworks-ab-testing-counterintuitive

Where to find Laura Schaffer:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauraschaffer/

Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

Referenced:

• Elena Verna on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/elena-verna-on-how-b2b-growth-is-changing-product-led-growth-product-led-sales-why-you-should-go-freemium-not-trial-what-features-to-make-free-and-much-more/

• Bandwidth: https://www.bandwidth.com/

• Twilio: https://ahoy.twilio.com/

• Jeff Lawson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffiel/

• The Surprising Power of Online Experiments: https://hbr.org/2017/09/the-surprising-power-of-online-experiments

• Reforge: https://www.reforge.com/

• Online Experimentation at Microsoft: https://ai.stanford.edu/~ronnyk/ExPThinkWeek2009Public.pdf

• The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life: https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Path-Wealth-financial-independence/dp/1533667926

• Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones: https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/0735211299/

• James Clear on The Tim Ferriss Show: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/648-james-clear-atomic-habits-simple-strategies-for/id863897795?i=1000592431628

• The Great British Baking Show on PBS: https://www.pbs.org/food/shows/great-british-baking-show/

• Hotjar: https://www.hotjar.com/

• Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/

• Builder: https://www.builder.io/

• ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/

• Lenny Bot: https://www.lennybot.com/

• Segment: https://segment.com/

• Senior Growth PM, Monetization, at Amplitude: https://boards.greenhouse.io/amplitude/jobs/6636704002

• Lead Growth PM at Builder: https://boards.greenhouse.io/builder/jobs/4814755004?gh_src=30cfda2d4us

• Growth PM at Rapid: https://jobs.lever.co/rapidapi/8d2611d1-6463-4919-9817-31f61e730831

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Laura’s background

(04:15) How to carve your own career path, and an example from Bandwidth

(05:50) Laura’s career growth framework

(10:18) The value of customer insights

(12:25) The “voice of the customer” report

(16:14) Leaning into your strengths

(18:16) The experiment that shifted the way Laura thinks about friction

(20:20) Questions that improved Twilio’s onboarding and conversion rate

(28:53) Thinking about the psyche of your users

(31:26) The hot dog analogy for burying “scary stuff”

(33:58) Why it’s better to be iterative and why experiments fail

(36:21) Saving money by validating fast

(41:58) Where the best ideas come from

(49:51) Experimentation lessons

(52:54) The amount of time a growth team needs to be successful

(54:43) The big change at Twilio that led to tens of millions of dollars

(58:41) The need for both PLG and enterprise, and how Amplitude plans to tap into PLG

(1:05:42) What it’s like to serve developers

(1:11:16) Lightning round

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

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