Growth Insights
Lessons from 247 conversations with growth leaders
Synthesized from 125 hours of podcast interviews across 40 shows in 4 languages. Every article quotes the people who actually built it.
Elena Verna on Why $100M ARR Doesn't Mean You Have Product-Market Fit
Elena Verna helped Lovable hit $100M ARR in 8 months—faster than any company in history. Here's why she believes they still don't have product-market fit and what that means for every growth leader building in AI.
Elena Verna · Head of Growth
Kate Syuma on Why Product Quality Kills More PLG than Bad Tactics
Kate Syuma spent six years at Miro scaling from 63 employees to nearly 2,000. Her most contrarian belief? Your growth tactics are useless if your product experience is broken.
Kate Syuma · Growth Advisor & Founder
Sean Ellis on Why Product-Market Fit Is Just the Beginning
The founder who coined "growth hacking" reveals why most startups waste their product-market fit advantage—and shares the survey questions that helped Dropbox avoid that trap.
Todd Olson · Founder & CEO
Kate Syuma on Why Miro's Best Onboarding Experiment Failed Users Loved
Kate Syuma scaled Miro from no onboarding to 50 million users. The experiments that won Twitter praise often lost on metrics—here's what actually moved the needle.
Kate Syuma · Growth Advisor & Founder
Growth Leaders from Meta, Twitter, and Instacart on What Actually Moves the Needle
The operators who scaled Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Uber, and Instacart share their most counterintuitive lessons: why retention trumps acquisition, when to ship without data, and how a single word change unlocked Japan.
Multiple · Co-founder
Wes Bush on Why Most SaaS Companies Build Watered-Down Gatorade
ProductLed founder Wes Bush breaks down his 9-component system for building a product-led growth motion that actually converts, including the one exercise that boosted MRR by 20%.
Wes Bush · Founder
Pulkit Agrawal on Why Chameleon Killed Its $25/Month PLG Plan
Chameleon's CEO explains why a $25/month PLG plan nearly killed the company, how a sales-assisted pivot drove 1,000% ARPU growth, and what makes most product tours fail.
Maria Thomas · Chief Product Officer
Gina Gotthilf on Why Duolingo Grew Without a Budget and Scrappy Beats Rich
The former Duolingo VP of Marketing and Growth explains why having no budget forced better decisions, how she became employee #20, and why her new $13 million startup operates like it's broke.
Gina Gotthilf · Co-founder & CMO
Yann Leonardi sur le framework AARRR : arrêtez d'empiler des bonus
Expert en Growth Marketing, Yann Leonardi explique pourquoi votre offre saturée de bonus ne convertit pas, et comment bâtir un système d'acquisition basé sur l'action, la psychologie client, et la validation terrain.
Yann Leonardi · Co-Founder
Lauryn Isford on Why Your Activation Metric Should Be in the Single Digits
Most teams pick activation metrics that are too easy to hit. Lauryn Isford explains why single-digit activation rates correlate with long-term retention, and how Airtable's team drove 20% activation growth by rethinking onboarding.
Lauryn Isford · Head of Growth
Raman Malik on Why Perplexity Spends Almost Nothing on Paid Acquisition
Raman Malik ran a paid acquisition team at Lyft before joining Perplexity. Now he barely touches it. Here's why retention beats channel optimization, what good activation rates actually look like, and how to know when CAC:LTV even matters.
Raman Malik · Head of Growth
Leah Tharin on Why Your Salespeople Are Killing Your PLG Motion
Most PLG companies past $5M have sales teams. The problem isn't salespeople—it's how you pay them. Leah Tharin breaks down the incentive traps killing self-serve revenue and what to do instead.
Leah Tharin · PLG Advisor
Teresa Torres on Why Discovery Teams Throw Ideas Away, Not Build Faster
Product discovery coach Teresa Torres explains why the best growth teams compare and contrast solutions before building—and how assumption testing beats A/B testing for deciding what to ship.
Teresa Torres · Product Discovery Coach
Brian Balfour on Why Retention Beats Acquisition Every Time
The founder of Reforge and former VP of Growth at HubSpot explains why the best companies obsess over retention first, how to define the right retention metric, and why funnels lead to linear thinking.
Brian Balfour · CEO
Victoria Colombato: Cómo Duplicar el Conversion Rate en Mural (Ex-PM Growth)
Victoria Colombato fue la primera persona contratada en el equipo de Growth de Mural. En su segundo quarter duplicó el conversion to paid. Aquí está el manual que usó para lograrlo.
Victoria Colombato · Head of Growth
Hila Qu on Why PLG Is Really DLG (Data-Led Growth)
The former Director of Growth at GitLab explains why most companies fail at product-led growth, how to avoid giving away your product for nothing, and the leverage points that drive actual conversions.
Hila Qu · Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Reforge
Laura Schaffer on Why Adding Friction to Your Signup Flow Boosted Conversion 5%
Laura Schaffer ran a guerrilla A/B test at Twilio that broke every assumption about developer signups—and discovered that "bad friction is bad and good friction is good."
Laura Schaffer · VP of Growth
Elena Verna on Why 95% of Growth is Now Innovation, Not Optimization
The head of growth at Lovable explains why traditional activation tactics don't matter anymore, how shipping velocity became the ultimate retention strategy, and why she's spending 95% of her time inventing new growth loops instead of optimizing old ones.
Elena Verna · Head of Growth
Naomi Gleit on Meta's Early Growth Playbook and the Power of Disagreeability
Employee #29 at Facebook reveals how the legendary growth team shifted from marketing to product, why "7 friends in 10 days" worked, and what makes Mark Zuckerberg's small group so effective.
Naomi Gleit · Head of Product
Amol Avasare on How Anthropic Grew from $1B to $19B ARR in 14 Months
The hardest job in growth means throwing out 70% of what you know, spending most of your time firefighting success disasters, and betting big instead of optimizing small.
Amol Avasare · Head of Growth
Wes Bush on Why Your Free Model Is Probably Watered-Down Gatorade
The founder who helped 324 SaaS companies generate over $1 billion in sales argues that the next decade won't be won by those who build the best products—but by those with the sharpest go-to-market motion.
Wes Bush · Founder
Victoria Colombato: Cómo construir growth cuando nadie sabe qué es growth
Cuando Victoria Colombato entró a Mural, su instrucción fue "haz que esto crezca". Su primer cuarto no lo pasó corriendo experimentos, sino reduciendo un mar de métricas a solo tres números.
Victoria Colombato · Head of Growth
Vaibhav Sahgal on Value Connection, Not Growth Hacking
The Reddit VP thinks growth teams have a branding problem. They don't create value—they connect it. And that distinction explains everything from when to hire to why push notifications need a 10% CTR minimum.
Vaibhav Sahgal · VP Consumer Product
Teresa Torres on Why Customer-Centricity Without Business Value Is a Disservice
The Product Talk founder believes most teams wait too long to learn they've built the wrong thing—and that customer-centricity without profit is just charity work in disguise.
Teresa Torres · Product Discovery Coach
Sean Ellis on Why Growth Knowledge Doesn't Translate to Execution
He coined "growth hacking" and sold nearly a million books. Then he discovered the hard truth: reading about growth and doing growth are entirely different problems.
Sean Ellis · Founder
Sandy Diao on Why Being Data-Driven Can Kill Your Growth
Most growth teams fail because they're too data-driven. Sandy Diao believes the best growth hypotheses start with customer stories, not benchmarks—and she has the conversion disasters to prove it.
Sandy Diao · Director of Growth
Raman Malik on Why Growth Teams Should Fail More and Spend Less
The head of growth at Perplexity thinks your team is running too many A/B tests, playing it too safe with big bets, and obsessing over the wrong activation metrics.
Raman Malik · Head of Growth
Phil Carter on Why Your Best Growth Wins Hide Inside Failed A/B Tests
The former Quizlet and Faire growth leader believes your roadmap should prioritize what you learned from tests that bombed—because that's where the non-obvious breakthroughs live.
Phil Carter · Growth Advisor
The Anti-Data Playbook: What Growth Leaders at Meta, Twitter, and Instacart Know About When to Ignore the Numbers
The operators who scaled Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Instacart share a surprising confession: their best growth wins came from strategic shifts, not A/B tests—and every time they trusted their gut alone, they failed.
Multiple · Co-founder
Leah Tharin on Why Product-Led Growth Isn't About Products Selling Themselves
The PLG advisor who survived two hypergrowth companies believes your product doesn't sell itself—and that's not just okay, it's strategic. Here's why commoditized markets demand free trials and how Flash demos evolved into trackable conversion machines.
Leah Tharin · PLG Advisor
Lauryn Isford on Why Activation Rates Should Be Lower (Not Higher)
Most growth leaders chase high activation rates. Lauryn Isford, who rebuilt Airtable's onboarding and drove a 20% lift, argues the opposite: lower is often better, experiments are expensive, and tooltips are mostly dead weight.
Lauryn Isford · Head of Growth
Kyle Poyar on Why Community Must Betray Your KPIs
The OpenView partner has a rule: if you build community to hit your own objectives, you'll never hit them. His contrarian take on PLG, pricing, and why sales reps calling every free user is a death spiral.
Kyle Poyar · Operating Partner
Kate Syuma on Why Big Bets Don't Work at Scale
The former Head of Growth Design at Miro spent six years learning that what users love on Twitter can tank your metrics, big redesigns cost more than they're worth, and asking one extra question might 3x your revenue.
Kate Syuma · Growth Advisor & Founder
Hila Qu on Why Product-Led Growth Is Really Data-Led Growth
The former GitLab director turned Reforge entrepreneur-in-residence has watched enough companies botch their PLG launches to know: giving away your product for free without data infrastructure is just leaving money on the table.
Hila Qu · Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Reforge
Gina Gotthilf on Building Growth Without Budget at Duolingo
The former VP of Marketing & Growth at Duolingo would rather have no budget than unlimited resources—a forcing function that separates real growth from expensive theater.
Gina Gotthilf · Co-founder & CMO
Elena Verna's Growth Machine: How Lovable Broke Every Rule
The head of growth at Lovable—now at $350M ARR in barely a year—has thrown out 70% of her playbook. No optimization. No rebrands. Just innovation, building in public, and giving product away.
Elena Verna · Head of Growth
Ed Baker on Why Growth Leaders Should Do Less, Not More
At Uber, Ed Baker found that 1 or 2 initiatives each year drove more growth than hundreds of other experiments combined. His approach: obsessive focus on the North Star metric and the discipline to ignore everything else.
Ed Baker · Angel Investor and Growth Advisor
Darren Chait on Building Viral Growth Without Forgetting the Fundamentals
Most viral products fail because users see the share button but never understand the value. Calendly's VP of Marketing explains why experiencing the product as a scheduler—not just a sender—changes everything about retention and conversion.
Darren Chait · VP of Marketing
The Darius Contractor Playbook for Growth That Doesn't Scale (Until It Does)
Most growth leaders optimize for scale. Darius Contractor spent a decade at Dropbox, Facebook, and Airtable learning that the best growth comes from knowing exactly when not to hire a growth team—and how to let your best people outgrow you.
Darius Contractor · Chief Growth Officer
Brian Balfour on Why Great Companies Win With Retention, Not Acquisition
Most founders obsess over acquisition. Brian Balfour proved the winners obsess over keeping people—and built Reforge to teach the world why retention is the only metric that compounds everything else.
Brian Balfour · CEO
Andrew Chen on Growth in the AI Era: Why the MVP Is Dead Again
The a16z general partner sees AI products growing to millions of users with no growth strategy, random acronym names, and zero notifications—just like the early internet.
Andrew Chen · General Partner
The Pricing Playbook: Harmon, Sharma, Lee, and Holm on Growth Through Monetization
The best pricing leaders treat it like any other product feature—something that shapes customer behavior, drives outcomes, and evolves constantly. Here's how four top growth executives think about monetization.
Alison Harmon / Akshay Sharma / Janie Lee / Carsten Holm · Head of Growth
Why the Best Growth Leaders Push Activation Into Product, Not Marketing
Why the best growth leaders push activation work into product, not marketing