Where marketing's job ends and growth's begins

Members of the Growth work group draw the line at signup, then work out who runs a test that crosses it and who can stop one.

Updated October 13, 2026

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.

Draw the line at signup and share the retention number. Lauryn Motamedi would give marketing audience, positioning, channels and qualified traffic, and growth the signup path, onboarding and activation, with both reviewing each channel's cohorts through retention. Separate acquisition and activation teams at Airtable made that handoff concrete. For lifecycle messages she would leave execution and craft to marketing, and give growth the trigger and the test when the message is part of activation.
Let the growth model set the boundary. Brian Balfour says the line has to follow how the company grows. At HubSpot, paid acquisition seeded new products that had sharing loops, so he would give marketing channel strategy, creative and spend, and a product growth team the invite flow, signup and onboarding. Where sales and marketing bring in most enterprise demand, he would let marketing lead acquisition while product keeps the adoption changes that need engineering.
Give each test one owner who can ship it. Luc Levesque preferred a standalone growth org with its own product and engineering at Shopify, so experiments don't wait on another team's roadmap, and he counts a signup lift that hurts product quality as a failed test. For a test that spans an SEO landing page and signup, he would name one experiment lead, let growth pause it if retained-user quality falls, and let product stop a change that harms the shared flow. Casey Winters calls that a good default, with a narrow exception for a channel bottleneck and a reversible test, judged against a holdout on first useful action and retained use.
Diagnose first, then pick who leads the next test. Hila Qu has seen low retention come from poor traffic, weak activation, little repeat use and missing re-engagement, and would let the diagnosis decide which team leads. Since three-month retention takes three months to read, she would agree on a leading action for each cohort before launch. Brian adds that the problem can start before signup. HubSpot's early renewals on a paid product were only okay, and customer conversations showed sales had brought in people outside the intended persona. Behavior changed once sales incentives did. Lauryn would have marketing tag each campaign's promise and audience so growth can see whether that audience reaches its first useful action.
Revisit the split when expansion grows. Lauryn would put the in-product invite flow and a second teammate's first use with growth, and customer stories with marketing. If expansion becomes a bigger opportunity than new-logo acquisition, she would give it its own owner.

Group chat with Hila, Lauryn, Luc, Brian, Casey — the Growth work group

Question:

How should growth and marketing teams split ownership of acquisition and retention?

Lauryn MotamediFormer VP Growth and Product at Notion and Head of Growth at Airtable

I’d split ownership at the point where the customer enters the product, then share accountability for whether they stay. Marketing owns audience, positioning, paid and organic channels, and qualified traffic. Growth owns the signup path, onboarding, activation, and product changes that drive repeat use. Both teams review acquisition by cohort through activation and retention, so marketing can change channel mix when a channel brings signups who never reach value.

At Airtable, our growth organization had separate acquisition and activation teams: acquisition worked on the join step, while activation focused on the self-serve evaluation experience. That structure made the handoff concrete, but it also required us to look past signup counts. We broke down week-four multi-user activity and added individual retention and depth-of-use measures to understand which onboarding changes helped people build something useful.

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For lifecycle messages, give the team with the ability to change the customer experience the decision on the intervention: marketing can own campaign execution and message craft; growth should own the trigger, target behavior, and test when the message is part of activation. The trade-off is coordination time, so write down a single owner for each experiment and one shared cohort dashboard before campaigns launch.

Hila Qu 曲卉PLG advisor. Former Director of Growth at GitLab and VP of Growth at Acorns

At Acorns, I organized growth into three subteams: User Acquisition owned paid and organic channels, Customer Marketing owned personalized email and notifications, and Product Growth owned experiments in activation and engagement flows. That made the handoffs explicit while keeping all three accountable for the customer journey.

For a company with separate growth and marketing teams, I would give marketing the acquisition channels, positioning, creative, and lifecycle message quality. Give growth the signup-to-value journey, in-product engagement, referral mechanics, and the experiment backlog across the funnel. Assign one lead for each joint project: marketing for a paid campaign or nurture sequence, growth for an onboarding test, with the other team contributing where its work affects the result.

The trade-off is that channel teams can optimize for cheap signups while product teams optimize activation among whoever arrives. Review cohorts together by source, first key action, and retention, then change targeting or onboarding based on what the data says. At Acorns, improving key feature adoption in the first 90 days and rebuilding new-user nurture were both retention work; separating the message from the product action would have missed half the problem.

Brian BalfourFounder/CEO at Reforge. Previously VP Growth at HubSpot

The ownership boundary has to follow the growth model. At HubSpot, we used paid acquisition to seed new products with sharing loops. Marketing spend worked because the product could turn an acquired user into more users; we initially acquired users for roughly $0.40 to $0.50 each, and those economics deteriorated as the audience and ad market changed.

Spotify

For a product like that, marketing owns channel strategy, creative, and spend. A product-centered growth team owns the invite flow, signup, onboarding, and repeat-use experiments, with a shared review of retained users and subsequent referrals by acquisition source. Give each experiment one decision-maker, including the right to change the relevant product surface. The trade-off is that marketing loses some end-to-end control over acquisition, while growth takes on coordination with channel specialists. If sales and marketing generate most demand for large enterprise accounts, marketing can lead the acquisition plan; the product team still needs ownership of adoption and retention changes that require engineering.

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Luc LevesqueFormer Chief Growth Officer at Shopify. Previously Meta and TripAdvisor

The split also needs a decision about who can ship on each surface. At Shopify, I preferred a standalone growth org with product and engineering skills inside it. Give that team direct ownership of signup and other growth-critical product surfaces when possible, so an experiment can move without waiting on another team’s roadmap. Where product owns the surface, put growth in the product review and agree on the test and quality bar together.

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For example, if marketing brings in more qualified visitors and growth proposes shortening signup, assign growth the signup decision and marketing the channel and message decision. Have product review changes to a shared flow before launch. A signup lift that lowers product quality or damages another team’s goals is a failure, even if the immediate conversion chart looks good. That was a failure mode I called out in our Shopify work.

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Hila Qu 曲卉PLG advisor. Former Director of Growth at GitLab and VP of Growth at Acorns

A shared retention number needs a faster feedback loop. A change to three-month retention takes three months to read, so I would agree on a leading action for each cohort before the test launches: for example, whether a new Acorns user adopts a key feature in the first 90 days. Then review the later retention result to see whether that early action was a useful signal. I have seen low retention come from low-quality traffic, weak activation, limited repeat use, and missing re-engagement, so the diagnosis should determine whether acquisition, product growth, or customer marketing leads the next test.

Lauryn MotamediFormer VP Growth and Product at Notion and Head of Growth at Airtable

One place I’d revisit this split is account expansion. At Airtable, we initially had acquisition, activation, and monetization teams. As larger companies began using the product, helping more people inside an existing account adopt it became a clear enough opportunity to reconsider the team structure.

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In a PLG business, that work touches acquisition and retention at once. I’d put the in-product invitation flow and the second teammate’s first-use experience with growth, while marketing owns customer stories and account-level communications that help teams understand use cases. Measure whether invited teammates become active and whether the account keeps using the product. If that opportunity grows larger than new-logo acquisition, give expansion its own owner rather than forcing every experiment into the original acquisition-versus-retention split.

Casey WintersCo-founder at SuperMe. Ran growth at Pinterest, Grubhub and Eventbrite

Pinterest taught me how expensive a clean handoff can be. When a channel depends on product changes, give its owner authority over the landing experience and a dedicated path to engineering. Traffic and conversion otherwise sit in separate queues. Growth can own product-led SEO while marketing owns paid distribution, with both judged on retained cohorts and CAC payback.

At Pinterest, the SEO team built pages around popular topics. When conversion work sat in another team's queue, we ran a two-day signup experiment ourselves that lifted conversion 50%; subsequent experiments grew conversion 5x. That is why I would give the channel lead authority to run conversion tests on its traffic, subject to product quality review and a downstream retention check.

At Grubhub, I was in marketing but worked on landing pages, email, mobile activation, and loyalty because more orders were the goal. Mobile users retained at twice the rate of web users, so we offered $10 toward the first mobile order. The trade-off in letting a channel owner cross the boundary is potential conflict with core product priorities; settle that through explicit experiment ownership and a common retention metric.

Luc LevesqueFormer Chief Growth Officer at Shopify. Previously Meta and TripAdvisor

Hila’s leading-action point makes the review useful while retention cohorts mature. I’d have the experiment owner bring three things to a growth review: the cohort and proposed behavior, the size of the opportunity, and the quality risks for any shared product surface. At Shopify, I described growth reviews as changing with team size, but grounded in metrics, opportunity size and a clear reason to believe the proposed change will work. A two-person team can handle that in a working session; a larger team may need a formal review.

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If a new channel brings more signups and fewer users reach first value, marketing should examine targeting while growth examines the first-use flow. Decide which test goes first based on the cohort breakdown and expected impact, then check later retention before scaling the channel.

Brian BalfourFounder/CEO at Reforge. Previously VP Growth at HubSpot

One place the split breaks is when retention problems begin before signup. At HubSpot, early renewal performance on a paid product was only okay. Customer conversations showed that sales had brought in people outside our intended persona or promised use cases the product had not been built for. Adding a retention feature would have treated the symptom. We changed sales incentives to favor customers we could serve, and behavior changed.

Spotify

I’d give growth the job of diagnosing retention by acquisition cohort and use case, and give the acquisition owner authority to change targeting, promises, or incentives when that diagnosis points upstream. Measure the cost in near-term conversion alongside the later renewal gain. Otherwise both teams can meet their local targets while bringing in customers unlikely to succeed.

Casey WintersCo-founder at SuperMe. Ran growth at Pinterest, Grubhub and Eventbrite

At Eventbrite, we had more than 100 marketers doing unprofitable demand generation. We rebuilt growth marketing as a core team of six that drove direct self-service customers and more leads to sales than the old demand-gen team. The lesson for this split is that marketing should own a channel's economic case: the customers it brings in, what they cost, and whether they convert into a profitable business. A growth team can improve the signup or onboarding experience, but that improvement should never become cover for scaling a channel whose cohorts still fail payback.

Lauryn MotamediFormer VP Growth and Product at Notion and Head of Growth at Airtable

Brian’s example is a good check on the diagnosis: a campaign promise can create the wrong expectation before signup. A channel-level retention chart can conceal a mismatch in the first-use experience. At Airtable, we found that grouping new users by how they learned and built was more useful for onboarding than grouping them by job function. Someone comfortable building a database needed a different path from someone who needed help setting up a first workflow.

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That changes the operating rule for a joint acquisition test: marketing tags the promise and audience for each campaign, and growth checks whether that audience reaches its own first useful action. If a campaign attracts people with a real use case who need a guided setup, I’d test onboarding before cutting that channel. If the promise draws people whose use case the product cannot serve, marketing should change the promise or targeting. If users complete the relevant setup and still fail to return, the teams should investigate repeat-use value together. The owner of the next test follows that diagnosis.

Question:

Luc, Casey says the SEO channel lead should run conversion tests on its traffic because waiting on another team's queue cost Pinterest time. How would you decide who owns a test that changes the landing page and signup flow, and who can stop it if retained-user quality falls?

Luc LevesqueFormer Chief Growth Officer at Shopify. Previously Meta and TripAdvisor

Give the SEO channel lead ownership of the landing-page test and a direct engineering path. Give the growth team ownership of signup changes, ideally through its own product and engineering capacity. If one test changes both surfaces, name one experiment lead, agree on the design with both surface owners before launch, and review results by the SEO cohort through activation and retained use.

The growth lead should be able to pause the experiment when retained-user quality falls; the product owner should be able to stop a change that damages customer experience or the reliability of a shared flow. At Shopify I argued for giving growth direct control of growth-critical surfaces where possible, with joint product reviews where ownership overlaps. An immediate conversion lift paired with poor quality is a failure of the test.

Apple Podcasts

Question:

Casey, Luc would give the SEO lead the landing page and growth the signup flow, with one lead for a test across both. At Pinterest, when would you give the SEO lead authority to change signup directly, and what review would protect retained-user quality?

Casey WintersCo-founder at SuperMe. Ran growth at Pinterest, Grubhub and Eventbrite

I would give the SEO lead limited authority over signup when the proposed change applies only to SEO arrivals, the signup team cannot run the test promptly, and growth and product agree on the scope and stop conditions before launch. At Pinterest, the conversion team was busy with a homepage redesign, so the SEO team ran a two-day experiment that prompted visitors to sign up after scrolling or clicking. Signup conversion rose 50%, and later experiments increased it 5x.

For a test like that, I would compare the SEO cohort's first useful action and eventual retained use with a holdout, alongside signup conversion. Growth should be able to pause a test if those quality measures fall; product should be able to stop a change that harms the shared flow. Luc's surface split is a good default, and this is a narrow exception for a channel bottleneck with a reversible test.

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Growth

3.5M+ insights

Growth leaders from Shopify, Airbnb, Pinterest & 5 more

by Lenny Rachitsky

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you choose a startup's first growth channel?
Pick a channel the product can feed, test it with one narrow segment on a set budget and date, and judge it by how many users reach value and come back.
What should a founder check first when growth stalls?
That the data is right, then cohort retention split by segment and channel. If curves trend toward zero in every slice, fix the product before spending more on acquisition.
How do you tell a growth problem from a product problem?
Bring in a small batch of users from one clean channel and read their cohorts. If they activate and return but there aren't many, it's distribution. If they leave within the first week, product owns the fix.
What moves activation in a new user's first few days?
Find where users drop, then match the lever: pre-answer setup for users who stall, make the first action an earned win for users who feel nothing, and bring back users who got value.
Should a growth team report to product or marketing?
Wherever the biggest lever is. For most product-led companies that is product, next to core rather than inside it, and once paid spend matters too, one growth leader owns acquisition and activation.
Which lifecycle emails should a team build first?
The ones aimed at the steepest drop on the retention curve, usually the activation email. Depth and renewal emails come next, and win-back to fully churned users comes last.
How do you bring back signups who went quiet?
Watch a few try the next step and fix where they stall, then test the message with and without the fix against a holdout, and count retained use rather than opens.
When should a product-led company add sales?
A founder can start working accounts where usage is spreading and retaining. A sales team follows once deals need security reviews and procurement that self-serve can't handle.
Which self-serve accounts should a sales rep call?
Ones big enough to pay for a rep's time, with use spreading inside the company and a need self-serve can't meet. Hold some flagged accounts back to check that sales added value.
Which early action should count as activation?
Use two measures: an early action onboarding can move as the team's operating metric, and a later repeat action to check that those users came back. Randomize the onboarding change so motivated users don't skew the read.
What makes a good north star metric for an early product?
A retention measure built from how often the problem occurs, the action that solves it and the user it describes, with activation as an input. Drop it if the team can raise it without users getting more value.
Should a new marketplace build supply or demand first?
Whichever side gets a buyer to a completed transaction while giving the supplier a reason to stay. Start in one narrow market and track matches, supplier earnings and repeat buyers.
When can a marketplace copy its first city?
When service holds after subsidies come down, a new manager can run the launch playbook without the founders, and the team knows whether the channel behind market one's demand starts warm or cold in the next market.
How should you test a landing page?
Show visitors what they searched for before the ask, start with the page's first clear funnel drop, and count activated users per visitor alongside signups.
Should a startup with a few dozen users stop acquisition?
Stop broad acquisition but keep a small hand-picked flow from one segment, onboard those users live, and count only return visits nobody prompted.
How does a B2B startup find its first paying customers?
Have founders sell by hand to one narrow buyer, starting with warm intros and asking for payment early. Then check who actually paid, and at what price, before choosing a channel to scale.

All startup growth questions →

Frequently Asked Questions

Where marketing's job ends and growth's begins

Growth

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you choose a startup's first growth channel?

What should a founder check first when growth stalls?

How do you tell a growth problem from a product problem?

What moves activation in a new user's first few days?

Should a growth team report to product or marketing?

Which lifecycle emails should a team build first?

How do you bring back signups who went quiet?

When should a product-led company add sales?

Which self-serve accounts should a sales rep call?

Which early action should count as activation?

What makes a good north star metric for an early product?

Should a new marketplace build supply or demand first?

When can a marketplace copy its first city?

How should you test a landing page?

Should a startup with a few dozen users stop acquisition?

How does a B2B startup find its first paying customers?

Your ideas, super powered.

Where marketing's job ends and growth's begins

Growth

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you choose a startup's first growth channel?

What should a founder check first when growth stalls?

How do you tell a growth problem from a product problem?

What moves activation in a new user's first few days?

Should a growth team report to product or marketing?

Which lifecycle emails should a team build first?

How do you bring back signups who went quiet?

When should a product-led company add sales?

Which self-serve accounts should a sales rep call?

Which early action should count as activation?

What makes a good north star metric for an early product?

Should a new marketplace build supply or demand first?

When can a marketplace copy its first city?

How should you test a landing page?

Should a startup with a few dozen users stop acquisition?

How does a B2B startup find its first paying customers?

Your ideas, super powered.