Ed Baker on the Five Functions Every Growth Team Needs to Scale

Don't Build a Growth Team Until You Hit Oil

Most startups hire for growth too early. Ed Baker has seen it happen dozens of times as an investor, and he's made the mistake himself as a founder.

The problem is confusing growth with product-market fit. They're not the same thing. Product-market fit is building something people love. Growth is pouring fuel on that fire once it's already burning.

An analogy I like to use is like drilling for oil. No matter how good your drill is, if you're drilling in the wrong place, you'll never hit it.

— Ed Baker

Baker joined both Facebook and Uber because they'd already struck oil. His first Uber trip was "magical." Drivers told him they were making more money than ever before, with total flexibility. That's product-market fit. Only then do you add growth expertise to scale what already works.

The Five Functions That Make Growth Teams Work

When Baker started Uber's growth team in 2013, he had 5 people. Not 5 engineers or 5 marketers—5 functions. Each person owned one critical discipline: product, design, engineering, marketing, and data science.

Some had never done their function before. The first person running growth marketing at Uber had zero marketing experience. But they were analytical, scrappy, and obsessed with moving the needle.

This structure came directly from Facebook, where Baker ran international growth. Both companies built separate growth teams reporting directly to the CEO, structured cross-functionally around a single North Star metric. At Facebook, that metric was monthly active users. At Uber, it was weekly trips—a metric that captured both riders and drivers in one number.

If you're not working on something that's moving this metric in a positive way, you're probably not working on the most important thing.

— Ed Baker

One or Two Things Move the Needle More Than Everything Else Combined

Growth teams love to brag about running hundreds of A/B tests. Baker thinks that's mostly noise.

At Uber, the growth team added a small button in the rider app: "Want to make some money? Become a driver." That single feature produced as many new driver signups as all of Uber's paid marketing combined. Every year, maybe 1 or 2 things like that accounted for more growth than hundreds of other experiments combined.

The trick is ruthless prioritization. Baker's framework is simple: estimate how much each potential project will move the North Star metric. If it won't move the needle significantly, don't do it. Even if it's a nice-to-have.

You can, by just focusing on like the things that really will move the needle, that can make a big difference.

— Ed Baker

At Facebook, Baker's team noticed that in Japan, conversion rates dropped dramatically at the invite step. The local team said it was cultural—inviting friends to a new platform was considered rude. So they changed one word. Instead of "invites," they called them "announcements." Let Facebook announce to your friends that you're now on the platform. Japan went from one of the slowest-growing countries to one of the fastest. They surpassed their local competitor, Mixi, shortly after.

Hire for Both Art and Science

The best growth leaders combine analytical rigor with creative intuition. Baker won't hire someone who only has one side.

In interviews, he asks candidates to walk through A/B tests that surprised them—experiments that moved the needle more than expected, or ones that flopped despite high confidence. He wants to hear how they think, not just what they've shipped.

Then he gives them a challenge problem. When Travis Kalanick interviewed Baker for Uber, he asked him to figure out how to turn promo cards into a major acquisition channel. Baker had a few days to prepare, then presented his full strategy: what he'd test, how he'd measure it, how he'd optimize the design and landing page.

Some founders worry that senior candidates will balk at challenge problems. Baker disagrees. If someone won't put in the work during the interview process, that's a red flag. True growth leaders get excited about solving hard problems, even hypothetical ones.

The other critical quality: people management. Growth leaders need to build and scale teams, not just run experiments themselves. Baker asks candidates what their last performance review said—both feedback from their manager and upward feedback from their reports. If a company doesn't do 360 reviews, he asks: "If I called one of your direct reports right now, what would they say are your strengths and weaknesses?"

Focus on the Bottleneck Side of the Marketplace

In two-sided marketplaces, most teams spread resources across both sides. Baker learned at Uber to identify the constraint and go all-in there.

For Uber, the bottleneck was always supply. They needed more drivers, not more riders. So the growth team obsessed over driver acquisition and retention. The "become a driver" button in the rider app was a perfect example—it turned their largest asset (riders) into a solution for their largest problem (not enough drivers).

This focus becomes even more critical as you scale. Baker points out that at Facebook, the growth team focused far more on retention and engagement than acquisition. As you get bigger, keeping users active matters more than adding new ones. Retention compounds. Leaky acquisition doesn't.

The same principle applies to team resources. With a small team, you can't afford to split focus. Baker's advice: pick the biggest bottleneck, align the entire team around moving that metric, and say no to everything else.