Sean Ellis: preference

Transcript context

…That's a fun story. Thanks for sharing that. Okay, so talking about growth and helping companies figure out how to grow. Say you go to a company, they're getting 42% on the Sean Ellis test, and they're like, "Okay, cool, let's start thinking about growth." What's your first piece of advice to them to start when they're thinking about growth? And then just broadly, how do you approach helping them figure out how to grow? Ultimately, it's about trying to get as many of the right people to that same state that we just talked about with the must-have users, so trying to get as many people to experience the product in a way where they'd be very disappointed if they could no longer use the product. And so that's not just acquisition, which is how most companies think about... Initially, it was awareness then maybe the more developed way was, oh, let's at least focus on profitable acquisition. But in my experience, the hardest part really sits inside the product team, so how do you shape that first user experience so they actually use it in the right way and it's not so difficult that they give up? And that ultimately, we understand what makes it a must-have product. And then what we're trying to do is build a... Yeah, it sounds kind of theoretical here, but I can go into the details on how, but build a flywheel around that must-have value. So step one would be understand it. Step two for me is then figure out a metric that essentially captures units of that value being delivered. And so when I think about a north star metric, that's what I'm thinking about is something that reflects how many people are coming in and experiencing that product-market fit experience, whatever that is. And it's not just me telling them, "Here's what your north star metric should be." It's that ultimately the team needs to decide that together. And then really just diagramming, what are all of the different ways that we can grow that north star metric? So that's where you start to actually build, I call it a value delivery engine, but it's what does our onboarding look like? What's that aha moment? That activation? What does the engagement loop look like? Is there any referral? Try to capture it as it is today. And then, from there, thinking about where are the biggest opportunities for improvement, so those high-leverage opportunities, and then ultimately starting to run experiments against those opportunities. Generally, I think I touched on it a little bit earlier, but generally the sequence that I like to do is start with activation because that one's just so critical and it's easy to get lost in between, especially for an early product. The product team's so focused on the roadmap. We're two features away from not even needing marketing anymore. This thing's going to take off. And then a marketing team so focused on bringing new people in, but how do you get those new people to a great first experience falls through the cracks a lot of times. So a lot of focus on activation and then engagement and referral and getting the revenue model right. And then once each of those pieces are working well, then starting to really obsess on the channel side. One thing that I'll say. and then engagement and referral and getting the revenue model right. And then once each of those pieces are working well, then starting to really obsess on the channel side. One thing that I'll say. When I go in and directly am involved with a company on the acquisition side, I am thinking about my hypotheses on the acquisition pretty early on, because if I go into it and I have no idea how we'll acquire those customers, I'm not real confident I'll figure it out when I'm there. So I want to have two or three things that seem pretty viable as ways to profitably acquire customers, and knowing that once I get deep into it, I'll probably come up with one or two more and I've got five, one of them's likely to work. But I don't want to just be under the pressure of having to come up with that once I come in, if I don't at least see an angle from that before I get involved with the company.…

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