S01E06 - The Startup Avengers

Do you remember how Thanos wanted a genocide? In startups, products and growth-related problems are like Thanos, all ready to wipe out startups if they aren't solved.

The Avengers, in the startup world, are the product and growth folks. They, at any given point in time, are working on:

1. Aligning product strategy, as an organization grows.

2. Running and tracking multiple experiments.

3. Hiring people that can handle the insane magnitude of work.

4. Developing new products and processes, as the market evolves.

5. Ensuring that the company does not run into the ground and more.

PMs/GMs == The Startup Avengers

In the final session of the GrowthX Bootcamp, we learned how to setup up and run product/growth teams. Here are my takeaways and a mini get-started guide for all the PMs/GMs out there.

Build the right team

The size of product/growth teams depends on your organization's size and the stage that you are in (MVP/early scaling/mature scaling). You would either have folks owning multiple skills or multiple people for each skill.

In any case, a team building a tech product, will need these skillsets of a(n): 1. Designer 2. Developer 3. Analyst 4. Marketer

Ensure that you have these skillsets in hand before you start building your product.

Define the North Star Metric.

The NSM is the key to growing any product. It must accomplish three things:

Lead to revenue Reflect customer value Measure progress

Defining an appropriate NSM is crucial, since the entire organization will work towards chasing this single metric. A few examples of NSM are:

1. Airbnb → Nights booked

2. Facebook → Daily active users

3. Intercom → Number of customer interactions

4. Shopify → Each customer's GMV

NSM is completely dependent on the product. Hence, you should deep dive into how it is defined before zeroing in on yours.

Structure, Structure, Structure!

Even though the roles and responsibilities of PMs/GMs are generally fluid, it is important to bring structure to everything. Some ways to bring structure to your team are:

1. Document EVERYTHING. It is important to document everything, from what you are doing, to the expected outcome, to how the outcome will affect your business and customers.

2. Set goals, milestones, OKRs, KRAs, etc for your team. If you don't know about these terms, Google it. They are crucial while building and running a team.

3. Create structured processes for every function. For example, have a defined process and template set for user research, experimenting, designing, development, testing, etc.

Prioritize your problems!

When you are a product/growth manager, you have a million problems that need to be solved at any given point in time. At this stage, it becomes crucial to prioritize these problems, based on various parameters like effort, impact, etc. Use frameworks like RICE to help you work through your list, and ensure that everything gets done with discipline.

Example of a RICE framework

Data-driven Decisions

Humans tend to make decisions based on instinct. But in product and growth, that is not always the best route.

Data-driven decision-making will always add a higher probability of success to your hypothesis.

When you don't find data, run ample experiments before deploying anything on your product. Build your problem statements and hypotheses based on:

1. User Feedback → This includes suggestions given during user calling, application store comments/ratings, surveys, etc.

2. Market Research → External research that supports your hypothesis. For example, trying out a minimalistic design for your website, since research shows that it reduces cognitive load and improves user experience.

3. Funnel Data → This includes the business insights derived from the product data. For example, if most people leave your e-commerce store after adding items to the cart, you have to prioritize fixing the cart-to-purchase part of your funnel.

4. Past experiences → This is where your instinct counts. You can find out what experience drives your instinct and use that as the base while building products, running experiments, creating processes, etc.

Let's save the world product!

There is no single 'hack' to grow your product.

The approach to grow any product should be to: Understand > Define > Acquire (through monetization)

Product/growth strategies vary from organization to organization and evolve, as the product grows. All you can do is make the most of it. I really hope I could help with it.

Thanks for reading! :)

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Hey! I am Rutvi.

Thanks for checking out The Startup Life.

It’s my escape from the daily rut and I hope to become a better version of myself through writing.

I do product management as my day gig and writing by the night. Also, a Mumbai girl and marine drive is ♥️