Startup growth, from the first channel to the growth team
The Growth work group answers startup growth questions in group chats. Members work through finding first customers and getting users to stay. They also argue over how growth teams are organized and how marketplaces start and expand.
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Questions Answered
Choosing the first growth channel for an early startup
Pick a channel the product can feed, test it with one narrow segment on a set budget and date, and judge it by users who reach value and come back.
What to check first when a seed-stage startup stops growing
Check the data before the curve, then read retention by segment and channel before you go looking for a new channel.
Growth problem or product problem: how to tell which you have
Read retention by segment and channel first. New users who activate and return but are too few point to distribution; users who leave within the first week point to the product.
How much to spend on growth before product-market fit
Before fit, spend founder time and product work freely, and cap cash at what it takes to recruit one cohort you can learn from.
Which activation lever to pull in a new user's first days
Find where new users drop before picking a lever: pre-answer setup for users who stall, make the first real action a win they earn, and give users who got value a reason to return.
Keep, move or cut: sorting the steps in an onboarding flow
Keep a step that helps the user reach a habit-forming use case or changes what happens next, move one that only makes sense after a first success, and cut the rest.
Finding your product's aha moment, and checking it's real
Watch new users do the job they came for, turn what they valued into a few measurable candidates, and check each against later retention for the users you built the product for.
Where marketing's job ends and growth's begins
Split where the user enters the product: marketing takes audience, channels and the promise, growth takes signup through activation, and both judge each channel by the cohorts that reach value and stay.
Product or marketing: where a growth team should report
Map the growth model first, then put the team where the biggest lever sits. For most product-led companies that is product, next to core product rather than inside it, and once paid spend and product levers both matter, under one growth leader.
Ranking lifecycle emails by where users drop off
Rank emails by the part of the retention curve they move. For most products that puts the activation email first, then emails that deepen use and save renewals, with win-back to fully churned users last.
Getting quiet signups back: fix the path, then send the email
Find out where quiet signups stall and fix that before scaling a message, then judge the campaign on whether people complete the core action and keep using the product, not on opens.
When self-serve needs a sales team, and whom it calls first
Sell first to accounts where usage is already spreading and sticking. A founder can work those deals early; a quota-carrying team waits until price point, deal friction and usage data show self-serve can't close them.
Which self-serve accounts to send to sales, and how to check it helped
Route an account when it is big enough to pay for a rep's time and needs something self-serve can't give, and hold some flagged accounts back to check that sales adds value they wouldn't have reached on their own.
Activation metrics: one to steer onboarding, one to check retention
Steer onboarding with an early action the team can move and that gives users a first experience of value, and use a later repeat action to check that those users came back when the need recurred.
An early-stage north star: what to count, and when to drop it
Define the north star from how often the problem occurs, the action that shows it was solved and the user it describes, treat it as a retention scoreboard with activation underneath, and drop a candidate the team can raise without users getting more value.
Supply or demand first: choosing where a new marketplace starts
Build whichever side gets a buyer to a completed transaction while giving the supplier a reason to stay, in one narrow market, and track matches, supplier earnings and buyer repeat use before scaling acquisition.
The tests to run before a marketplace opens its next city or category
Expand when the home market keeps its service quality after incentives come down, a new manager can run the launch playbook without the founders, and the team knows whether the channel that built demand starts warm or cold in the next market. Then run market two as an experiment with its bars and its team written down first.
Landing pages judged by the users they keep
A landing page converts when it shows visitors what they came for before asking anything, puts one next step where they want more, and is judged by how many visitors reach first value and come back.
What to do in the two weeks after first users never come back
Stop broad acquisition but keep a small, hand-picked flow of users from one segment, watch their first sessions to see where nothing valuable happened, and count only the return visits nobody prompted. If even hand-held users don't come back on their own, the use case is the problem.
How founders win their first ten B2B customers
Most first B2B customers come from founders selling by hand to one narrow buyer, starting with warm intros and asking for payment early. The first ten deals then show who actually buys, at what price, and which channel can reach the next ones.
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