Growth Playbook

01

The Growth Mindset

Growth is not about hacks or tricks. It is a systematic, data-driven approach to finding what works and doing more of it. The best growth teams treat growth like a science—forming hypotheses, running experiments, and learning from every result.

Growth vs Marketing

Traditional Marketing	Growth
Focus on top of funnel	Full funnel optimization
Campaign-based	Experiment-based
Creative-driven	Data-driven
Brand awareness	Measurable outcomes
Separate from product	Product is the channel

The AARRR Framework (Pirate Metrics)

Dave McClure's framework breaks growth into five stages. Optimize each one:

Acquisition: How do users find you?
Activation: Do users have a great first experience?
Retention: Do users come back?
Referral: Do users tell others?
Revenue: Can you monetize users?

Before You Focus on Growth

Growth without product-market fit is waste. Ensure these are true before scaling:

Retention signal: Users are coming back without prompting
Organic growth: Some users finding you without paid acquisition
NPS above 40: Users would recommend you
Unit economics work: You can acquire customers profitably
Clear value prop: You can explain why users should care in one sentence

The Growth Equation

Sustainable growth comes from compounding small improvements across the funnel:

Growth = (Acquisition × Activation × Retention) + Referral - Churn

A 10% improvement at each stage compounds: 1.1 × 1.1 × 1.1 = 33% overall improvement. This is why full-funnel thinking beats optimizing just one stage.

02

Finding Your Growth Model

Every successful startup finds a growth model that fits their product and market. There are only a few models that really work—find yours and double down.

The Three Growth Engines

1. Viral Growth

Users bring in other users through the natural use of the product.

Examples: Dropbox (sharing), Slack (team invites), TikTok (content sharing)
Key metric: Viral coefficient (K-factor) > 1
Works when: Product is inherently social or collaborative

2. Paid Growth

Acquire customers through paid channels profitably.

Examples: Most B2B SaaS, D2C brands, subscription services
Key metric: LTV:CAC > 3:1, CAC payback < 12 months
Works when: High LTV, clear attribution, scalable channels

3. Sticky Growth

Grow through exceptional retention and word of mouth.

Examples: Notion, Superhuman, Linear
Key metric: Net revenue retention > 100%, low churn
Works when: High switching costs, product becomes essential

Growth Model by Business Type

Business Type	Primary Model	Key Channels
Consumer Social	Viral	Product virality, content, influencers
B2B SaaS (SMB)	Paid + Sticky	SEO, paid ads, content marketing
B2B SaaS (Enterprise)	Sticky + Sales	Outbound, events, partnerships
Marketplace	Viral + Paid	SEO, paid, referrals
D2C E-commerce	Paid	Paid social, influencers, SEO

The One Channel Rule

Most successful startups win with 1-2 channels, not 10. Find your channel through experimentation, then go deep. Spreading across many channels means winning at none. Once you find what works, reinvest 80% of growth resources there.

03

Acquisition Channels Deep Dive

There are only about 19 customer acquisition channels. You need to find the 2-3 that work for your business and dominate them. Here are the most important ones for startups.

Channel Comparison

Channel	Cost	Time to Results	Scalability
Content/SEO	Low-Medium	6-12 months	High (compounds)
Paid Search	Medium-High	Immediate	Medium (CPCs rise)
Paid Social	Medium-High	Immediate	Medium (fatigue)
Referral Program	Low	1-3 months	High (if viral)
Product-Led	Low	3-6 months	Very High
Outbound Sales	High	1-3 months	Linear (add reps)
Partnerships	Medium	3-6 months	High (if right fit)

Content & SEO

Best for: B2B SaaS, tools, educational products
Advantages: Compounds over time, builds authority
Key tactics: Bottom-of-funnel keywords, programmatic pages, link building
Benchmark: 6-12 months to meaningful traffic

Paid Acquisition

Best for: Products with high LTV, proven conversion
Advantages: Immediate results, precise targeting
Key tactics: Audience testing, creative iteration, retargeting
Benchmark: 3:1 LTV:CAC minimum to scale

Product-Led Growth

Best for: Self-serve products, viral mechanics
Advantages: Low CAC, scales infinitely
Key tactics: Freemium, free tools, templates, embeds
Benchmark: 2-5% free to paid conversion

Community & Word of Mouth

Best for: Niche products, strong opinions
Advantages: High trust, low cost
Key tactics: Community building, user-generated content, events
Benchmark: 30%+ of new users from referral

The Bullseye Framework

Use this framework to find your best channels:

1. Brainstorm: List all 19 channels and rate potential for your business
2. Rank: Pick top 3 most promising channels
3. Test: Run cheap experiments on each for 2-4 weeks
4. Focus: Double down on the winner, deprioritize the rest

04

Activation: The First Experience

Activation is where growth lives or dies. A user who does not experience your core value in their first session probably never will. Focus obsessively on getting users to their "aha moment" as fast as possible.

The Aha Moment

Every successful product has a moment when users "get it." Find yours:

Product	Aha Moment
Facebook	7 friends in 10 days
Dropbox	Put 1 file in folder
Slack	2,000 messages sent by team
Zoom	Host first meeting
Notion	Create first page with content

Finding Your Aha Moment

1. Analyze retained users: What actions do retained users take that churned users do not?
2. Find the correlation: Look for actions in first 7 days that correlate with 30-day retention
3. Validate causation: Does pushing users to take that action improve retention?
4. Simplify: What is the minimum version of that action?

Onboarding Best Practices

The Time-to-Value Metric

Measure how long it takes users to reach their aha moment. Then obsessively reduce it. Canva gets users to a finished design in under 60 seconds. What can you get users to accomplish in their first session?

05

Retention: Keeping Users

Retention is the foundation of sustainable growth. A 5% improvement in retention can increase profits by 25-95%. Leaky buckets cannot be filled—fix retention before pouring more into acquisition.

Retention Benchmarks by Industry

Product Type	Good D1	Good D7	Good D30
Consumer App	40%+	20%+	10%+
Social App	50%+	30%+	25%+
B2B SaaS	N/A	N/A	95%+ monthly
E-commerce	N/A	N/A	20%+ repurchase

Retention Strategies

Habit Formation

+ Build into existing workflows
+ Create triggers (notifications, emails)
+ Variable rewards (what is new today?)
+ Investment (the more you use, the better it gets)

Switching Costs

+ Data lock-in (history, content)
+ Network effects (team, connections)
+ Customization (settings, preferences)
+ Learning curve investment

Re-engagement

+ Win-back email sequences
+ Push notifications (sparingly)
+ New feature announcements
+ Personalized recommendations

Continuous Value

+ Regular product improvements
+ New content or features
+ Education and tips
+ Community and support

Cohort Analysis

Track retention by signup cohort, not just overall. Look for:

+ Is retention improving for newer cohorts?
+ Where is the biggest drop-off in the curve?
+ Do certain acquisition channels retain better?
+ Does the curve flatten (sustainable) or keep dropping (problem)?

06

Referral & Virality

Referral is the holy grail—users bringing you more users for free. But true virality is rare. Most products can achieve meaningful referral growth with the right mechanics and incentives, even without inherent virality.

Types of Virality

Inherent Virality

The product requires sharing to work (Venmo, Slack, Zoom). Users must invite others.

Word of Mouth

Product is so good people tell friends (Superhuman, Notion). Organic recommendations.

Incentivized Referral

Users get rewards for inviting others (Dropbox, Uber). Manufactured virality.

Content Virality

User-generated content spreads with product branding (TikTok, Canva). Attribution built-in.

The Viral Coefficient

K = Invites Sent × Conversion Rate

If K > 1, each user brings in more than one new user, and growth is exponential. If K = 0.5, you still get 50% more users for free through referral.

K > 1: Viral growth (rare, usually only social products)
K = 0.5-0.9: Strong referral program
K = 0.1-0.5: Good word of mouth
K < 0.1: Minimal organic referral

Building a Referral Program

Dropbox: The Classic Referral Case Study

Dropbox grew 3900% in 15 months with their referral program. Key elements: double-sided rewards (500MB for both parties), product-relevant incentive (storage), prominent placement (dedicated page + constant reminders), and gamification (progress toward free space). Result: 35% of daily signups came from referrals.

07

Revenue Optimization

Revenue is the final step in the AARRR funnel but often the most neglected by growth teams. Small improvements in conversion and pricing have massive impact on LTV and overall business health.

Revenue Levers

Conversion Optimization

+ Pricing page optimization
+ Checkout flow simplification
+ Trust signals and social proof
+ Urgency and scarcity (when appropriate)
+ Payment method options

Average Revenue Increase

+ Upsells and cross-sells
+ Annual plan incentives
+ Add-on features
+ Usage-based pricing tiers
+ Premium support packages

Pricing Page Best Practices

Net Revenue Retention (NRR)

NRR measures how much revenue you keep and grow from existing customers:

NRR = (Starting MRR + Expansion - Contraction - Churn) / Starting MRR

NRR > 120%: Excellent (customers grow faster than they churn)
NRR 100-120%: Good (stable with some expansion)
NRR < 100%: Problem (shrinking customer base)

08

The Experimentation Framework

Growth is a process of rapid experimentation. The best growth teams run dozens of experiments per month, learning from each one. Build a system for generating, prioritizing, running, and learning from experiments.

The ICE Prioritization Framework

Score each experiment idea on three dimensions (1-10):

I

Impact

How big could the win be?

C

Confidence

How sure are we it will work?

E

Ease

How easy is it to run?

ICE Score = (I + C + E) / 3. Prioritize experiments with highest scores.

The Experiment Process

1

Hypothesize

"If we [change], then [metric] will [improve] because [reason]."

2

Design

Define success metric, sample size, and duration needed for statistical significance.

3

Build

Create minimum viable test. Speed matters more than perfection.

4

Run

A/B test with proper randomization. Do not peek at results early.

5

Analyze

Did we hit significance? What did we learn? Document everything.

The Experiment Velocity Metric

The best growth teams measure experiments per week. Early stage: aim for 2-5 experiments per week. As you scale, increase to 10-20+. More experiments = more learning = faster growth. Facebook runs thousands of experiments at any given time.

Experiment Documentation Template

Name: Clear, descriptive experiment name
Hypothesis: If/then/because statement
Metric: Primary metric to measure
ICE Score: Impact, Confidence, Ease
Duration: How long to run
Sample Size: Users needed for significance
Results: What happened
Learnings: What we learned, regardless of outcome
Next Steps: Ship, iterate, or kill

09

Growth Metrics That Matter

You cannot improve what you do not measure. But measuring everything is just as bad as measuring nothing. Focus on the metrics that actually drive growth decisions.

Core Growth Metrics

Metric	What It Measures	Target
Weekly Active Users	Engagement breadth	5-10% weekly growth
Activation Rate	Signup to aha moment	40%+ for consumer
D7/D30 Retention	User stickiness	See benchmarks above
Viral Coefficient	Referral effectiveness	0.3+ is good
LTV:CAC Ratio	Unit economics health	3:1 minimum
CAC Payback	Capital efficiency	<12 months
Net Revenue Retention	Revenue growth from existing	>100% for SaaS

The North Star Metric

Your North Star is the single metric that best captures the value you deliver to customers:

Examples

Airbnb: Nights booked
Spotify: Time spent listening
Slack: Messages sent
Facebook: Daily active users

Good North Star Metrics

+ Correlates with long-term success
+ Reflects customer value delivered
+ Leading indicator, not lagging
+ Team can influence directly

Vanity Metrics to Avoid

Be wary of metrics that look good but do not drive decisions: total signups (what about active users?), page views (without conversion context), social followers (engagement matters more), and downloads (if users do not return).

10

Building a Growth Team

Growth is a team sport. The best growth teams combine product, engineering, design, data, and marketing skills. Start small, but build with intention.

Growth Team Evolution

Stage 1: Founder-Led (0-10 employees)

Founders run growth experiments directly. No dedicated growth person yet. Focus on finding product-market fit and initial traction.

Stage 2: First Growth Hire (10-30 employees)

First growth hire is usually a generalist who can do analytics, run experiments, and execute across channels. Look for curiosity and execution speed.

Stage 3: Growth Pod (30-100 employees)

Small cross-functional team: Growth PM, Growth Engineer, Data Analyst. Operates independently with its own roadmap and metrics.

Stage 4: Growth Organization (100+ employees)

Multiple growth teams focused on different parts of the funnel: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Monetization. Growth becomes a department.

Growth Team Roles

Growth PM

+ Owns growth roadmap and metrics
+ Prioritizes experiments
+ Cross-functional coordination
+ Data-driven decision making

Growth Engineer

+ Builds experiments quickly
+ A/B testing infrastructure
+ Feature flagging and rollouts
+ Analytics implementation

Data/Analytics

+ Funnel and cohort analysis
+ Experiment analysis
+ Dashboard and reporting
+ Insight generation

Growth Marketing

+ Paid acquisition
+ Content and SEO
+ Email and lifecycle
+ Creative testing

What to Look for in Growth Hires

T-shaped skills: Deep in one area, broad across many
Data fluency: Comfortable with SQL, analytics tools, experimentation
Bias for action: Ships fast, learns faster
Curiosity: Always asking "why" and "what if"
Resilience: Most experiments fail—they keep going

11

Scaling What Works

Finding what works is half the battle. The other half is scaling it before the window closes. Growth channels saturate, competitors copy, and what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow.

Scaling Framework

1

Validate at Small Scale

Prove the channel works with manual effort before automating.

2

Systematize

Turn what works into repeatable processes with playbooks and templates.

3

Automate

Build tools and workflows that reduce manual effort.

4

Delegate

Hire specialists to own and optimize the channel full-time.

5

Invest

Pour resources into the channel while it is still working.

Signs a Channel is Scaling Well

Healthy Scaling

+ CAC stays stable or decreases
+ Quality of users remains high
+ More spend = proportional results
+ Team can execute without founders

Unhealthy Scaling

+ CAC rising faster than LTV
+ Conversion rates declining
+ Diminishing returns on spend
+ Channel saturation/fatigue

The Law of Shitty Click-Throughs

Every channel degrades over time. Banner ads had 78% CTR in 1994, now below 0.1%. First-mover advantage is real—scale fast while the channel works, and always be exploring the next channel before current ones saturate.

12

Common Growth Mistakes

These mistakes kill growth efforts. Most are about doing things in the wrong order or optimizing the wrong things. Learn from others so you do not repeat them.

01

Growing Before Product-Market Fit

Pouring users into a leaky bucket. High CAC, low retention, wasted money. Growth amplifies what is there—if the product is broken, growth makes the problem bigger.

Fix: Prove retention first. If users are not coming back organically, fix the product before scaling acquisition.

02

Optimizing the Wrong Funnel Stage

Spending all resources on acquisition when activation is broken. Users flood in and immediately churn. CAC looks good, LTV is terrible.

Fix: Work backwards from retention. Fix each stage before optimizing the stage before it. Activation before acquisition.

03

Chasing Every Channel

Spreading thin across 10 channels means winning at none. No channel gets enough attention to optimize properly.

Fix: Pick 2-3 channels max. Go deep. Master one before adding another.

04

Copying Without Context

What worked for Dropbox might not work for you. Different products, markets, and moments in time.

Fix: Use case studies for inspiration, not blueprints. Test everything in your context.

05

Ignoring Unit Economics

Growing fast with negative unit economics is just speeding toward bankruptcy. Raising CAC to "grow faster" without LTV increase.

Fix: Know your LTV:CAC ratio. Never scale a channel with ratio below 1:1. Target 3:1 before aggressive scaling.

06

Not Running Enough Experiments

One or two experiments per month means learning slowly. Growth is a numbers game—more experiments, more learning, more wins.

Fix: Build experiment velocity as a core metric. Aim for 3-5+ experiments per week.

07

Stopping Winners Too Early

Finding something that works and then moving on too quickly. Not extracting full value from a working channel or tactic.

Fix: When you find a winner, double and triple down. Scale until you see diminishing returns.

08

Ignoring Qualitative Feedback

Pure data can not tell you why things happen. Missing the insights that explain the numbers.

Fix: Combine quantitative data with user interviews, session recordings, and support tickets.

In This Guide