Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Breaking the rules of growth: Why Shopify bans KPIs, optimizes for churn, prioritizes intuition, and builds toward a 100-year vision | Archie Abrams (VP Product, Head of Growth at Shopify)

Nov 7, 2024

01:17:46

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Archie Abrams, VP of Product and Head of Growth at Shopify, shares insights on his impactful journey leading a 600+ person growth organization. He reveals why Shopify prioritizes long-term growth over traditional KPIs, emphasizing churn optimization and the significance of experimentation. Archie also discusses the benefits of integrating sales into a product-led model and the unique structures of their growth teams. He reflects on the importance of a 100-year vision, fostering entrepreneurship, and adapting strategies for sustainable success in the ever-evolving e-commerce landscape.

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Quick takeaways

Shopify emphasizes a holistic growth strategy that prioritizes increasing overall traffic over merely focusing on short-term conversion rates.

The company fosters innovation by allowing decisions to be guided by a long-term vision rather than specific KPIs or metrics.

Shopify optimizes for churn by encouraging entrepreneurial growth among new merchants, recognizing that long-term success comes from a high volume of attempts.

Deep dives

Understanding the Funnel and Conversion Rates

Optimizing for conversion rates can lead teams to focus narrowly on their specific funnel stages, which may hinder overall growth. Instead of merely measuring conversion from one stage to the next, it's beneficial to think about increasing overall traffic and entry into the funnel. By prioritizing the number of new users entering the system, teams can achieve a more substantial long-term impact, even if that means short-term conversions might drop. This approach encourages organizations to adopt a holistic view of growth rather than just a transactional mindset.

Intro

3min

Strategic Growth and Entrepreneurship at Shopify

6min

Rethinking Customer Retention

8min

Navigating Monetary Friction in E-commerce

19min

Evaluating Long-term Impact of Experiments on Cohort Value

3min

Balancing Short-Term Wins with Long-Term Growth

4min

Long-Term Vision in Product Development

22min

Marketing Models and Strategies Unpacked

9min

Exploring Entertainment and Creativity: From Binge-Watching to AI Songwriting

2min

10.

Lessons in Leadership and Opportunities at Shopify

3min

Archie Abrams is the VP of Product and Head of Growth at Shopify, where he leads a 600+ person growth org across product, design, engineering, data, ops, and growth marketing. Shopify powers over 10% of e-commerce in the United States, with $235 billion in GMV in 2023 (roughly the size of Finland’s economy). He previously led Consumer product and growth at Lyft and was at Udemy for 8 years as SVP of Product having joined the company when it was 10 people. In our conversation, we discuss:

• Why Shopify optimizes for churn

• Why the core product team doesn’t use metrics-based goals

• Why they keep multi-year experiment holdouts

• How they structure their growth team

• The benefits of not having a CMO

• Lessons learned about integrating sales into a product-led growth model

• The power of discounting as a growth lever

• Much more

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