The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”)

0:00 The Sean Ellis test. Such a seemingly simple idea that has had such a profound impact on the startup world. The question is how would you feel if you could no longer use this product? Once you got A high enough percentage of users saying they'd be very disappointed. Most of those products did pretty well. If you fell too low, those products tended to suffer. Say someone is listening and they're like, Okay, man, I'm getting like 10%. I don't know what to do. What do you find often works? Just ignore the people who say they'd be somewhat disappointed. They're telling you it's a nice to have. If you start paying attention to what your somewhat disappointed users are telling you, and then you start tweaking onboarding and product based on their feedback. Maybe you're gonna dilute it for your must-have users. Moving retention often is really hard, but I guess it sounds like there's often something you can do. It's usually much more a function of onboarding to the right user experience than it is about the kind of the tactical things that people try to do to improve retention. What are like three or four things that you think people should definitely try to help improve activation of it? In my experience.

1:03 Today, my guest is Sean Ellis. Sean is one of the earliest and most influential thinkers and operators in the world of growth. He coined the term growth hacking, invented the ice prioritization framework. was one of the earliest people to use freemium as a growth strategy. And maybe most famously developed the Sean Ellis test to help you understand if you have product market fit, which a large percentage of founders use today and profoundly impacted the way startups are built. Over the course of his career, Sean was head of growth at Dropbox and Eventbrite.

1:33 Helped companies like Microsoft and Nubank refine their growth strategy, was on the founding team of Logme In, which eventually sold for over$1. And he's the author of one of the most popular growth books of all time called Hacking Growth. In our conversation, we dive deep into two topics. One, how to know if you've got product market fit. and what to do if you don't, and two, how to figure out how to grow once you found product market fit. If you're in the early stages of a new product wrangling with product market fit,

2:01 or trying to figure out how to jumpstart or further accelerate growth for your product. This episode is for you. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that I bring you Sean Alice. Mm-

2:23 Sean, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Lenny. I'm I'm super excited to be on with you. There's so much that I want to talk about. There's so many directions we can go. But Two Keep it focused. I want to spend time on two areas. I wanna talk about

2:37 How to know if you have product market fit? Mm-hmm. And what to do Once you have product market fit in terms of figure out how to grow. Yeah. And I know these things are very linked. I know you spent a lot of time on these things.

2:48 How does this feel? Sounds perfect. Yeah. Let's do it. Okay. Okay. Amazing. Let's talk about first of all the Sean Ellis test. Slash something people call sometimes the product market fit test. Such a seemingly simple idea that has had such a profound impact on the startup world.

3:07 I've never actually seen you talk about the history of this thing. How you came up with these questions, how you came up forty percent, the whole journey of this thing. So Let's talk about this. But first of all, can you just tell people what is the Sean Ells test for folks that aren't exactly familiar with this? It's a simple question that helps you figure out, you know, does anyone consider your product a must have or you know?

3:25 Ideally Who and how many people consider it, but but ultimately it's about trying to figure out, you know, do Is your product a must have which could be equated to to having product market fit. And so The question is, how would you feel if you could no longer use this product? And

3:41 I give'em the choice. Very disappointed, somewhat disappointed, or uh even not disappointed. Or not applicable if I already stopped using the product and What I'm trying to find are are those people who say I would be very disappointed if I could no longer use this product. And

3:58 That's that's a really powerful vein to dig into when you when you discover that you actually have some people who would Who would give a crap if your product disappears. This episode is brought to you by Gamma. An entirely new way to present your ideas. Powered by AI.

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6:16 To try out Command Bar, you can sign up. at commandbar.com slash Lenny, and you can unlock an extra 1000 AI responses per month for any plan. That's commandbar dot com slash Lenny. And the idea is that if you Forty per if forty percent or more of people

6:35 say they'd be very disappointed if they could no longer use the product. You essentially have product market fit. I would say it's a leading indicator of product market fit. The the the lagging indicator is do they actually keep using it? So Probably retention cohorts are Are more

6:50 More accurate. But the problem is, like if you, you know, like your time at Airbnb, when how long you have to look at a retention cohort before you know that you've actually long term retained someone. And so with this question, you can you can kind of find out day one You don't actually even need to be You don't need a a good analytics system in place to be able to see if if product market fit exists and so

7:14 Um yeah, the the forty percent Forty percent was not something I originally had in there. I was uh also originally I was I was trying to have just a filter so that I was not treating all feedback from customers the same. But I was I was trying to find feedback from from customers who actually really cared about the product. And then uh

7:34 was over time as I yeah at the time I was I was working for a couple of Y C back Companies and So those companies were all pretty pretty connected and and so I would share share the question with a lot of other startups in in Silicon Valley and so Over time I started to see there was a pattern that

7:52 Yeah, once you got a high enough percentage of users saying they'd be very disappointed, most of those very disappointed without the product. Most of those products did pretty well. And then if you if you fell too low, those products tended to suffer. Okay, there's two things I want to definitely follow up on here.

8:07 The first is such an important point that you made at the beginning when I introduced this test is That you described as a leading indicator of of product market fit and actually retention. People actually using your product, the product actually being used by the market is the actual ultimate test. Right. So the idea here is this is a good way to get a sense of Before you actually have data, are we headed in a good direction? Can you speak more about that? But like how to

8:31 When to use this and when it's most useful and best. For me in particular, when I come into a company, my my my goal is to help them grow. And so I don't want to put myself in a situation where I'm gonna fail. because no one actually cares about the product. And so

8:48 It it can really be asked. at at a company of any stage, it's it's helpful to understand who your must have users are. But Essentially once once you have it uh And even an MVP of it like a a very first MVP on the product.

9:01 you can still get some some useful feedback about the product if if if it's resonating with anyone. So I actually had a a company Where um I had I had committed to work with them. It was right after I I left Dropbox and I

9:16 I committed to working with these guys for six months to help them grow. I ran the question and came back at only seven percent of users saying they'd be very disappointed and w without the product and so I'm like I have six months to help them grow and they're only at seven percent right now. Who know it might take six months to get the forty percent. Am I doing them a disservice by being in a growth role and and you know, being on payroll?

9:39 during during this period of time. But fortunately with the signal and the information we got from the initial survey. we were able to get them at forty percent in two weeks. Wow, what did you do there and just as a case study. Yeah, yeah. So the company call called Lookout, it's a mobile security company and you know, now most of the things in Lookout were are are Like built into iPhones and Androids.

10:02 But at that time The product had uh had everything from like back up my data to find my lost phone to protecting your phone from uh Yeah, w with f with a firewall and anti virus. And so

10:16 when we ran this initial survey, I dug into the seven percent who said they'd be very disappointed without the product and found that um most of that seven percent were focused on the antivirus functionality. So They were like They know they need to protect their Their computer from viruses, smartphones were becoming more like uh computers, so it just made a lot of sense for them to that they'd need to protect their their phone and

10:41 I interesting at the time I think there was only like one kind of phone virus that it ever even happened, but It was a a pretty easy mental leap for people and so Now we knew okay, it's antivirus that people really valued. And so

10:54 Step one was just uh reposition the product on antivirus so that that kind of creates a filter, so Anyone who now is coming in to sign up for the product Yeah. doesn't care about antivirus is not gonna convert.

11:09 And those who Are excited about Antivirus are going to convert. We already know from the initial survey that that people value that after they convert. So by setting the right expectations around it up front.

11:22 You're gonna Bring people in with the right expectations. But then the second thing that we did was we streamlined onboarding so that the First thing that they did after signing up for the product was to set up the antivirus and then get a message.

11:35 you're now protected from from viruses and so It's really the combination of those two things. It's set the right expectations. And then speed to value. And so the next cohort of people that we surveyed were at forty percent saying they'd be very disappointed without the product. So that was literally took two weeks to make those changes. Six months later

11:55 It was sixty percent On on the on the score and then uh I think they hit the the billion dollar valuation four or five years later on uh ultimately being one of the one of the you know early unicorns and

12:11 Interestingly, they you know, as all of those things were built into mobile phones now. They they've completely changed the business, but they continue to do really well. Um But then continue to iterate the business. Having

12:25 having that kind of finger on the pulse early in the business was was important to to build the muscle in the business to be really uh responsive as the market changed. Sean, this is already amazing. There's just like a fractal of topic I want to explore from this very short conversation already. So the first is just follow this thread of basically you're sharing kind of a s growth strategy that I imagine you execute is Look for the percentage of people that would be very disappointed if your product went away. See who they are, see what they're excited about, and lean into that both

12:56 positioning wise, onboarding wise, and probably also cut out stuff from your product that they don't care about. Yeah, and uh And I was coming at it from a a marketing perspective initially, you know, over time I position myself self more in in a growth role with

13:11 product and and marketing uh as as areas I could influence, but As a marketer, I I I probably didn't have a lot of influence on a on a uh engineering founded company to say let's cut cut out stuff. So Yeah. it made more sense to say let's just sequence the onboarding so that we're we're

13:29 highlighting this And an onboarding to this. That was a little easier to sell. And just hearing that you can move this score so quickly. without all even changing the product substantially, uh I imagine would surprise a lot of people.

13:43 When you think about Like R moving retention often is really hard. And maybe we talk about that, but I guess it sounds like There's often something you can do that's not very hard that might significantly shift

13:54 Uh this product market fit test. Right. And then that ultimately like, yeah, moving retention is really hard, but It's it's usually much more a function of onboarding to the right user experience. than it is about the kind of the tactical things that people try to do to improve retention. Okay, I wanna put a pin in that and come back to that'cause that's a really important topic.

14:15 I wanna come back to Say someone runs the survey. And they get Forty percent. What should they have in their mind of like, this is what this is telling me? Because I think a lot of people are like, I got product market fit. I got this. Let's go, go, go.

14:27 What's the best way to think about what this tells you? Yeah, I mean it it does it tells you something really important, which is, you know, you you you haven't created something that uh people don't care about. So That's That's an an important insight, but until you deeply understand that product market fit. You

14:45 you kinda don't have the tools to be able to grow the business. So that's that's really the next step is to to dig in and figure out go who considers it a must have. How are they using the product? What did they what did they use before? What problem are they solving? Um one of my One of my favorite questions is uh so I I I tend to have a lot of questions that I that I build off of.

15:07 That I'm using that filter. Uh you know, trying to drill into the the users who say they'd be very disappointed without the product. And one of my favorite questions is What is the primary benefit that you get? And then um I use that initially as an open ended question to kinda crowdsource.

15:23 different benefits people are getting. But then then I run another survey where I turn it into a multiple choice question. force them to pick one of four kind of distinctive benefits statements. And then The question that follows on that next survey is why is that benefit important to you?

15:40 And then I start to get really good contact. So But I actually came up with this question when I was working with uh an early Y C company called um Zobney. And uh just inbox felt backwards and I When I

15:55 When I ran that question Basically, the people who said they'd be very disappointed without the product were focused on Zobni helps me find things faster in my email. So it's it's great to know, okay, that's the benefit. But when I asked Why is that benefit important to you? They said, Oh, I'm drowning in email. Like I I just I kept seeing that statement.

16:14 as as a written statement. And so when I then was trying to to to figure out how to acquire customers. When I tested Drowning an email? Question mark.

16:25 That set such a good hook that was the context that people were living in. that they were really responsive to the message of Find things faster with Zodney and then a description of what Zodney is. So Okay. I think when you can when you can really dig into the context of

16:41 Why that must have benefit is important to people. You you start to you start to get the ingredients to build that flywheel. that leads to long term sustainable growth. So what I'm hearing is

16:52 Whether you have Forty percent, whether you have sixty percent or even seven percent. The actual best use of this tool is look at that percentage of highly disappointed and see what they're looking for, what they're saying. Start drilling in, start peeling back that onion and just deeply understand them and and uh

17:09 Make sure that your that you're you know, ultimately your road your product roadmap is doubling down on the things that are important to your must-have customers. Your onboarding is bringing new people to the right experience. Your messaging is setting the right expectations. Your Your acquisition campaigns are are targeting people who actually have the need.

17:29 And so it's it's all about getting the right people to the right experience. And then even your engagement loop is about just reinforcing What uh you know, how to get people to experience that benefit more often. Awesome. And uh the forty percent threshold, so What you shared is you basically emerged from just looking at tons of startups doing the survey and finding a pattern.

17:49 How firm is that forty percent? Like how big of a deal is it? Thirty nine versus forty one. I don't think it's that firm. You know, to me, I think the real power is having some kind of Some kind of target for the team to be shooting for that basically says We're not gonna aggressively start to grow. until we hit this target. And I think that as just a f focusing

18:09 Um piece is really important because I think one of the One of the biggest challenges in in an early stage startup is Half the people feel like You know, we're we're

18:20 years from from having this product ready to grow and half the people are like, What are we waiting for? Where if you can actually get people on the same page of what is What what does product market fit look like for our business? And and it's at that point That

18:34 Yeah, and I and I Before I ever heard the term product market fit, I I remember the conversations back at at Log Me In and the mid two thousands of of kind of like When do we step on the gas? What is what is the combination of factors that need to be in place. before we start pouring fuel on the on the early fire and so

18:54 Yeah, I I I think that kind of or nail it and scale it. It's probably been a A a term that's been around for decades now, but you know, it's it's all kind of pointing to that same concept of product market fit. How often do you d have you seen false positives with this test where someone gets forty percent and something is not uh not right. They uh they're actually Far from it.

19:11 Or is it generally Pretty accurate. If if you're having people say that they'd be very disappointed without your product That um That's that's a really good sign. What I can tell you is that not not just a

19:23 Not necessarily a false positive, but like what is driving people to say they'd be very disappointed. Favorite. Books is uh hooked by near y'all. And he talks about in the in the kind of engagement loop that your last step is investment.

19:38 And so I ran the survey on a business that I thought was a fairly commoditized business. And um I wanna part of that I wanted to see could I could I use the same go to market approach on a later stage company. and and and use it to accelerate growth. And so This is a a business called um webs dot com.

19:58 And uh they they eventually got acquired by VistaPrint, but they'd been They've Pretty flat for the year before I went in there. And then I I started to kind of use this approach to to try to dial in uh their their their growth engine and I ran the survey thinking

20:13 Yeah, you you've had Products like Wix and Weebly that have have come onto the market since this, you know, more legacy website building product. has been around and I personally think they're a little easier to use. They're a little better. And so I didn't have high hopes when I ran the survey.

20:30 But it came back with one of the highest scores I'd ever seen, and it was like like ninety percent of the people saying they'd be very disappointed if they could no longer use the product. I've never seen that. And I was like How could that be possible? This this product is It's kind of a commoditized category. I wouldn't even say it's one of the best and And then when I wanna dug into it again, it comes back to that near all hooked model is that the investment people have made in building that website

20:55 They put so much into the you know, that they they know exactly how to make the changes and in the kind of the But uh CMS kind of side of things. They have have spent a lot of time just making it beautiful. And so so ultimately, um, it was something that that That was why they were saying they'd be very disappointed.

21:14 I mean but but Sure. Yeah, kinda fast forward and Mm. on when I initially went in, still doing these things

21:23 help the business resume growth and and and have significant growth over the next twelve months after we did these things. So still the signal we got from why people would be very disappointed uh without the product was was important and speed to value and kinda all all of the All the other things I think about in go to market for an early stage product. still were relevant. But just the

21:46 I think they're they were a little stronger on the uh Yeah. percentage he'd be very disappointed. Even even Eventbrite when I was there when we ran it was probably the second highest I'd ever seen. But with event organizers if they've already set their event up

22:01 On that platform. And they've sent it out and and to to their list and and all those people are coming in and they're managing their event, again, they've they've invested a a lot in the platform. So so sort of switching costs, I think I think can can factor in there. So it's

22:18 It's a a function of both switching costs and utility of the product. So that that's a question I wanted to ask is what's what's your guidance on when to ask this question? What I'm hearing is If you ask it Very

22:29 far along the journey when they're very invested out you'll get a much higher score. Is there any advice on how to the timing on the best way the best time to ask this question of your users. what I recommend is a random sample of people who Mm. really used your product. So they they've they've gone in. They didn't just sign up, but they went in and and and hopefully like

22:48 Hit activation moment. They've used it twice. You know, two plus times. And uh

22:55 And and they've they've ideally used it, say within the last week or two weeks, so that it's you know, they haven't churned yet. So It's a random sample of those people. That's that's kind of the ideal time to Basket.

23:08 Got it. So basically it's people that have activated whatever that means to you and have been using it for a couple of weeks. Not not people like landing on your home page and not people just signing up. Right. Not people who've seen like a demo of your product, but it's it's people who actually have experienced the product. But it's okay if they've used if if you're hitting people who've used it months later.

23:28 But like in that lookout example that I gave. If I'm If I'm testing People's uh perception of the product after I made updates to the onboarding, I'm gonna only want to

23:40 I'm gonna only wanna survey people who went through the new onboarding. Yeah. in the in an experimental group. Yeah. Okay. So I asked people on Twitter what to ask you. A lot of people had a lot of awesome questions. I'm gonna ask uh I'm gonna sprinkle in a couple of these questions throughout the chat.

23:54 One came in from Shrias Doshi, uh popular guest of the podcast. One of the ones that I listened to recently. Amazing. Yeah. Second I think it's the second most popular episode behind Brian Chesky. Um okay, so he had a question of just what are the limitations of the score? When does it break down. When should you not use it if ever. Is there anything of just like Here's when it's not gonna work for you. I think one off products would probably you know, like how would you feel if you could no longer watch the movie you just watch? Like

24:19 I wouldn't care. Um, even like when I run a workshop, I don't run I don't run this this as part of my survey after I do a workshop because um Yeah, like

24:31 how would you feel you could no longer attend the workshop you just attended doesn't make make sense. So I'll ask an NPS. Yeah. As my as my filtering questions so that I I'm

24:41 I'm looking at Yeah, I'm focusing in on feedback of people who love it. Also then Through a separate lens looking at people maybe who who would be my detractors. So I think I think one off products are probably not not good products to to run the question on. There may be other

24:56 Other uh Yeah, but it sounds like not many. Widely applicable. Yeah, I think it is. Like um at least from from my perspective, like I uh It it's been really useful for me anyway.

25:11 Awesome. Okay. And then the follow up question from Strauss is And I kind of asked this, but I'm curious if there's anything more here. If just have you seen any instances of startups over relying on the score prematurely declaring product market fit when in reality They haven't reached it yet and just Are there any other caveats of like cool, I got forty percent. Is there anything else you should know of like, okay, but maybe check this one thing.

25:31 Yeah, I mean I think to me it's kind of like W what really is the definition of product market fit is the definition that People who get through my crappy onboarding. And Actually experience the product.

25:43 Love it. And And if I'm able to retain those people, that means I have product market fit. Or is fixing that crappy onboarding part of getting to product market fit as well.

25:53 I think that's up for debate. So I you know, to me the hardest I wouldn't obsess on onboarding Yeah. if I know those who who kind of get get through the challenge of getting started with a product, still don't like the product, then

26:08 feels like it's a a a core product issue or, you know. wrong people using it in the wrong way. Issue. But Yeah, once

26:16 Once you have that, then then ultimately it doesn't mean that you're you're ready to grow. Like when when I focus on growth then I customer acquisition's almost the last step. Like once I once I validate that It's a must have for those early users. Then I'm thinking about, okay.

26:32 How how do I optimize speed to value? How do I make sure that people have the right prompts to come back and use the product at the right time. So it's kind of more of that engagement loop. How do I How how do I get my existing users to bring in more users if if there's something that makes sense on that end? Even how do I how do I optimize my revenue model?

26:51 And um Once all of those things are working well, then I'll obsess on the customer acquisition side. But um Right. Customer acquisition is so hard that if you if you're not really efficient at converting and retaining and monetizing people. you're gonna really struggle on the customer acquisition side.

27:08 Yeah. Cool. And we'll talk about uh Customer acquisition slash growth. Sure. Um, another question I want to ask in a couple Listeners asked is the forty percent So I had uh Jag from Nubank on the podcast. I think you may have worked with them and he they use fifty percent as their threshold.

27:24 Because uh apparently Brazilians are very c nice and they just won't be Optimistic, is what I said. Yeah. Yeah, so uh I guess the question is do you find instances where you should increase that percentage. And slash in B to B is anything different. Uh, do you change the percentage in B to B. Any advice there of just like when you adjust the threshold? Yeah, I hadn't really thought Thought too much on that. Um

27:46 Again for for me Yeah, generally I'm like it I'm I'm trying to just figure out is this a product that can grow? So like when I'm when I'm using it, I'm I'm trying to just Uh, you know, so if I got a thirty seven percent am I gonna be like, Oh no, this would be impossible. Um Yeah, or if I had a

28:03 A seventy percent does that mean I guarantee. Like say, Oh yeah, I wanna jump in and work with this company. Um Uh It's it's more nuanced than that. Like like

28:12 Obviously, um if If it's a seventy percent, but I have I have no idea how I grow the business that I'm I'm gonna be stuck there. So I but I do think he he brought up a really good point that that culturally some people are gonna be more um More optimistic or pessimistic.

28:30 Interestingly. When I came up with a question I I used to I used to just use kind of a normal satisfaction. question. I was when I was working at Zodney I

28:40 I would I'm I'm just like an intensely curious person anyway, so I'm just trying to dig in and understand the customers and so I've always done lots of surveying. But at at Zodney, I was gonna ask it as Up that use my filter as a satisfaction question. So, you know, how satisfied are you with this? I'm I'm very satisfied. I'm somewhat satisfied.

29:00 And I Wh our our main customers were actually senior management and so I thought you know, senior management's never satisfied. I'm gonna get always this like super lukewarm thing. How can I how can I change this question to be more

29:14 Mm. Yeah, give give me a more kind of We'll answer from these guys. Well, if I if I flip it and say, How would you feel if you could no longer use this product, I'll probably get a a more honest answer back from them. And and of course they're very disappointed if they can't get what they want.

29:29 And so Initially it was just for the for the case of В жадні But then I went to to Dropbox right after Zobni and and like oh I'll try the question again and the insights I got back were really useful and So

29:42 Each company I went to, I I kept using the question. I'm like, This works way better than your typical satisfaction question, but but initially it was was more about thinking just, you know, senior management to to get a more honest answer out of them. So that's the origin story right there. Yeah. Wow. That senior managers are just very harsh and they th they're not they don't need anything. Yeah. And you have to flip it. That is so interesting.

30:04 Just like that question. It's such a good reminder of how hard it is to build anything people really would be disappointed not to have. Like that's why this works so well. People are like, ah I don't need this at an app cares.

30:16 Right. Like that's the core of this. It's just that is hard. Well, especially when I first moved to Silicon Valley. So the first like Fifteen years of my career were not in Silicon Valley. And so that was I was in Eastern Europe and then New York and then Boston. You move to Silicon Valley and you have you have people who get really excited about technology for technology's sake. And so You know, just

30:38 Something being cool is like, isn't it cool that we can actually do this? Yeah. Drives a lot of people and so Yeah, to to me I'm I'm I'm very like practical if if it's not something that that is really bringing value to people.

30:53 then then the likelihood that that product's successful long term's gonna be pretty low. And so Even interestingly, at at Dropbox I Through the six months I was there, I would ask I'd ask one question like

31:06 Like. multiple times a month, um to I broke kind of the the early beta users into into a bunch of different lists. And I'd ask which best describes you? I like to be among the first to try cool new technology.

31:19 Right, only try things that I think will be useful for me. And over the six months it flipped from Ninety percent being people who try things. That they want to try cool new technology. to uh six months later, I it was people who

31:32 only, you know, only are gonna try something that they feel like is is useful. But what's kind of cool is just because what motivates you to try something is like you're an early adopter and you want to try something cool. If you're gonna keep using it, it's because it's giving you some utility. And so I could I could still use those early adopters to uh help me figure out where's the value inside the product. Awesome. So actually two questions along those lines. How durable do you find this percentage being? Say you hit forty percent.

32:01 How often Does that fade? And go away. Versus stay there or go higher. Yeah, I haven't seen it really like fade back down, but it's um but I've seen companies fail w

32:12 Yeah, despite having it, and I think a lot of times then it's it's uh Yeah, it's It becomes like an execution challenge. Once you once you have product market fit. you know, not everyone's gonna be a a good executor, but before that, like I I think getting to product market fit.

32:29 Yeah, obviously there's There's a lot of methodology for for for doing it today that that might make it a bit easier for people, but I still think it's fairly random and pretty dang hard. And so ultimately like the risk factor of creating something that people care about.

32:45 Is is Really difficult. So if you can get to the point where you have forty percent of the people are using it. saying they'd be very disappointed and and you have a reasonable sample size. Let's say you you know you got ten people and four of them said they'd be very Display without it.

32:59 you're still gonna get something useful from those four But I w I wouldn't say that's a sample size that you can you can really like go to market on. So Yeah. What's the good sample size you look for of just like, okay, this is actually good data I wanna rely on. That's really funny. Like I so so so much of the stuff I kind of like self learned, but I I I basically at one point said, I need at least thirty responses. And and I just thought I just kinda randomly made up a number and then And then I had people telling me, Yeah, thirty is kind of the minimum that you want on stuff like Okay. And even when I first created the survey, I remember showing it to the

33:30 To the uh co founder of Slide Share and she was like Her PhD was in Yeah, survey related stuff like

33:38 cognitive psychology, but she basically said it was it was really about surveying and she's like This methodology is amazing. How'd you come up with this and so Having some of that validation around these things helped, but you know, a lot of it was just Again, driven by my own Curiosity and um

33:55 And also just knowing that That failure is such a likely outcome that you Trying to trying to reverse engineer that failure and the then the number one

34:05 reason for failure would be that people don't actually care about the product and so When I find that that's that's a that's a really good sign that it's we're we're now down to An execution challenge. And there's this obvious element of

34:17 You may have product market fit with People. But that group might end up being very small. And the business you build around it could actually

34:26 be cool, but it's not gonna be a massive business. Is there anything there you can share just like It's hard to know the size of opportunity even though you know some people really, really like it. Yeah, I talked about I I I go to a uh multiple choice after I I initially use um open ended to open ended questions to sort of

34:44 Crowdsource the different use cases. But then I try to force people in a bucket. And then I can run filters each of those buckets and I'll be like, Oh, people who use it this way Are like sixty percent. likely to be very disappointed without the product.

34:57 But people who use it this way are thirty five percent likely to be very disappointed, but way more people use it. The thirty five percent way. And so then then having to like Yeah, do you w do you want that like intensely loyal Group.

35:11 Or the uh or the much broader much broader group that's that's maybe a bit less, but Almost there. I think that becomes a bit of a strategic um a strategic conversation of of like You know, do we

35:23 Do we wanna have A better chance of surviving going after a a niche that that we know we can serve well, or have we have we raised so much money that we have to go after like a really big market and and that that's not One's not gonna be long term, but maybe maybe then you're you're like, okay, once I once I have traction in that market, I can I can start to try to appeal to some other markets. So but I think that's where kind of some strategic decisions come in.

35:48 Do you have a heuristic of which you often recommend or is it very dependent on the situation? I prefer kind of a Uh more passionate customer base that's and and and work from there just because I think your biggest competition when you're when you're really innovating is is just like being irrelevant and And so if you're if you're like deeply relevant to anyone, I think that gives you a much better chance of long term success.

36:11 Awesome. That's a really good insight. Okay, two more questions along this line and then I want to talk about growth strategy. Uh one very tactical question. Is there Is there a tool you recommend for doing this sort of survey? Like do you recommend inline In the product, an email

36:24 Something else. I've used a lot of different uh tools. I actually uh had a survey business that I sold a private equity years ago and and um There was a on Uh you know, in

36:36 It was it's called Qualaroo, that's like kinda yeah. inflow uh survey tool. I don't think you know, I I I think just like s using SurveyMonkey with uh With Emailed surveys.

36:48 works fine and For me it's a lot more of like uh w What do I What what's like pleasant for the customer to fill out and then how what's gonna give me something where I can I can work really easily with the data. So that bounce, for example, uh um

37:04 they they had already intercom in place that had just introduced surveying But it was kind of a really crappy customer experience on On At least at that time. Uh th that's that's been almost a year now, uh or or actually a little over a year. And um

37:19 So I'm I'm really sensitive to like, is it a good survey experience for the consumer itself? And then um But yeah, I th I I don't think I'm I'm stuck to any one platform there. Such an important topic. Yeah. Just like again to remind people why this is so important. One of the most common questions founders ask is Do I have product market fit? Have I built something people want? Like that's just

37:39 Endless series of I don't know. How do I know? When do I know? And this is telling you in a really interesting way. So A leading indicator, you don't actually know until people actually start using it.

37:51 And whether they retain and continue using it. Is there just like uh advice on the shift you make from Relying on the survey to actually

37:59 looking at retention cohorts. Is it just once you have enough data, once you have a couple of cohorts, then start looking at that, forget about the survey. Yeah, what I would say is um uh Like but retention cohorts don't don't give you any of the qualitative insights into the why. So that's why we continue to do the survey. So Initially I would say if the survey comes back and it's you know it it shows you whatever your target number is. If you want to be like New Bank, it'd be a fifty percent or you you know.

38:25 I I spent a few years l two of the companies I launch, we launched in Hungary and I would say it's kind of the opposite end of the spectrum of of uh Brazil maybe maybe more pessimistic than the than the average kind of culture. And so maybe

38:39 Maybe thirty percent is good enough there. But but that ultimately whatever your target is that you you You have the signal that says, Okay, we we have enough value here. Let's start working on growing the business. But while you're working on growing the business I would be paying attention to those retention cohorts and if

38:57 If you're churning out all the customers who uh Mm. who were saying that they'd be very disappointed without the product, then okay, let's let's retrench and and rethink Do do we really have product market fair here and what what do we need to do to to to get it if we don't? Awesome.

39:13 Uh and speaking of new bank, if anyone wants to see how a company has actually operationalized this in the way they operate. That there's an episode that we'll link to in the show notes where Every new product at New Bank they build. Yeah. Before they launch it. They wait for a fifty percent uh threshold for people to say fifty percent of people would be disappointed if this product did not exist.

39:33 as they're developing it, and only then do they launch it publicly. Yeah, I think they even do it down to the feature level. Wow. So if you if you think about it like you know yeah How would you feel if you could no longer use this feature? starts to give you again the signal is that is that feature a must have feature? And if it's not, maybe maybe we shouldn't have it. And so um yeah, I I was

39:52 I was super excited when I when I saw how they were using the the survey and they they were doing it before I engage with them. Uh wow. But uh yeah. They they were doing it, I think From pretty early on in the business. The reason they can do this is they have a lot of users. They've millions and millions of users so they can ask.

40:10 some small percentage of people's question, because the people hearing this might be like, Oh my God, how many times am I gonna be asked this question when I'm using this feature? But they have a lot of users, so it's easier. Yeah. Okay, last question, I promise, along these lines. Say someone is listening and they're like, Okay, man, I'm getting like ten percent, I'm getting fifteen percent. I don't know what to do to

40:28 Increase My product market fit. You should just like a strategy of just dig into the people that are very disappointed and see what they Have to say, but any other advice Slash what do you find often works in

40:40 helping people move from, say, ten percent to forty percent. Yeah, so one one of the things that's kinda cool about um almost like open sourcing the survey approach is uh is again watching like how how Nubank has uh has evolved their usage, but um one of the other companies that I think uh

40:57 used it in an interesting way is superhuman and they I mean, I would say that they basically ended up probably putting a lot more momentum behind the question than than it had even before. They they posted something about how they did it on uh First Round Capital's blog. And What

41:14 I have always said, and again it's me coming At it from a from probably initially a marketing background. Which is like I'm I'm kinda taking the product as a as a fixed as a fixed thing and how d how do I actually figure out how to how to market and grow this product and

41:29 product changes are gonna take a long time and and so W what are the variables that I can control with a marketing background. But so one of the things I've always said is you know, just ignore the somewhat disappoint the people who say they'd be somewhat disappointed.

41:44 They're telling you it's a nice to have Like They're they're as good as gone. So just ignore those guys. And then But what superhuman did was and and the reason that Yeah,

41:54 Put one piece in the middle there before I say what Superhuman did. The reason that I say ignore those guys is that If you start paying attention to what your somewhat disappointed users are telling you And then you start tweaking onboarding and product based on their feedback.

42:09 Maybe you're gonna dilute it for your must have users. And that ultimately it becomes kinda good for everyone. But not great for anyone. And so that was my my fear of like trying to trying to read too much into the users who say they'd be somewhat disappointed. But the the superhuman guys actually found I think a good way around that where they said, Okay, what is the

42:29 Benefit. that my must have users are focused on. And then Of the Users who say they'd be somewhat disappointed. So the the nice to have users

42:39 of those users who are also focused on that benefit. What what do they need in the product for it then to become A must have for them, and so They're staying true to that kind of core benefit. But they're trying to essentially take those on the fence users and moving them up. And so I think

42:57 They're Their way of approaching that. addressed what my concern was, which is are we gonna are we gonna kinda break it for the must have users? That's an awesome insight. By the way, did Rahul and the team there just

43:08 Do this on their own or are you involved in any way in this I mean that's the same thing, like I said, I w I wasn't initially involved with Nubank, I wasn't involved with them, and that that's the benefit of you know, we wrote about it in our book. in two thousand seventeen and so I think that I got it out there, but I I actually Teamed up with

43:25 the Kismetrics team in uh Two thousand Maybe. twelve and and and essentially publish this survey on survey.io Where we just made it freely available for people and a really easy template to to to prepare and send out and

43:40 The how to Guide on it. And it was all just yeah. Free I think Kiss Metcher's kind of using it as uh as maybe legion and and for me I just wanted a a way to to kind of put something out for the community and um

43:53 And so It's been out there for a long time, so it's not surprising that um that that that different companies have found different unique ways to use it. That's awesome. I think that post is one of the most popular in first round. Really had an impact on a lot of people. Yeah.

44:06 So just to repeat the uh approach you recommend for when you're digging into, I wrote this down when you're talking. For how to dig into what benefit people are finding. your advice is it's basically a follow up survey to the extremely disappointed people asking them what is the primary benefit you get?

44:23 It's a f open text initially. Then once you get a collection. You do it sounds like another survey. As multiple choice. Here's like a to a different group of people to be clear. To a different group. Yeah. Got it. Awesome. And then it's like which of these four or five benefits is is what you're getting out of this product? And then the question is why is this benefit important to you? Yeah. And then

44:42 You'll see, um we have uh Thank you. Eventually the the survey.io got closed down. But the But essentially the template that I I typically w used was then moved to PMF Survey.com.

44:55 And so you'll see some other questions that I have on there as well, like what would you use instead if this product were no longer available? And That's one of the interesting things is you start to see people who say they'd be somewhat disappointed. Usually they're focused on a commodity use case. And they they know an easy alternative to switch to. So to be a must have, it needs to be both

45:15 Uh valuable and unique. Okay. S anything else on this topic of the Sean Ellis test, product market fit test before we move on to growth strategy advice. No, I think that's I think we did almost an hour on that one topic, which I love because I feel like this is such a powerful tool that I think people sort of know and have used, but I think there's a lot of opportunity to Use it more effectively and And all the stuff you point out about it, like it's not just get the you have the threshold, cool. Let's move, let's grow. It's like this is just

45:44 This is how you figure out how to make it better and better and grow faster and faster. And it's actually a good segue talking about growth. So Even though you coined the term growth hacking. You spend most of your time. on the opposite, essentially, which is helping companies figure out sustainable growth strategies, not just a bunch of hacks to grow for a little bit and then disappear.

46:01 And From what I've seen, it's all rooted in This idea of product market fit and what helped you find product market fit and Imagine many of the stuff we've talked about.

46:10 Yeah, just one one quick uh interjection there is that When I coined growth hacking I I did not think of it as a bunch of uh one off hacks that What when I thought of it was what's more about what what is the way to ultimately drive sustainable growth, but it's uh over time. kinda maybe m more uh interpreted the way you described it, but just to just to jump in and say that.

46:30 That's a really good clarification. So how did you actually initially frame it? Uh when you Yeah, I just I just said it's it's about, you know, looking at every single thing that you're doing and uh scrutinizing its impact on growth in the business and um Particularly. I think most marketers when I first moved to Silicon Valley M most CEOs who were asking me to to help their companies, they were saying

46:54 We need help with awareness building and getting introductions from top VCs and so so much of of I think uh the way people were approaching growth was sort of like Textbook. marketing, you know, marketing textbook, how to how to approach it. And and startups just don't have the luxury to do all of those things. And so You gotta be really focused on

47:13 How do I acquire customers? to an experience that's gonna make'em wanna keep using this product and so I Yeah, maybe maybe I picked the wrong term in calling it growth hacking, but I I think it at least opened the conversation to to getting more people thinking about maybe maybe we should be thinking about growth in a different way than As it's traditionally taught in marketing courses in school.

47:33 Is there another term you think you should have used? Do you always think back, I should have called it this. Is there anything that you've had in your mind? I don't. I I I think um I think sometimes having something that's a little divisive is uh is almost better because it um It's too easy to just go completely unnoticed and and so Yeah. But I w I was trying to put a a name on not just how I was approaching growth, but seeing Yeah, Facebook obviously had a

47:58 very different approach to growth than than most companies. LinkedIn, Twitter, there were there's a handful of companies that were approaching it in the same way I had previously been approaching it, and I just thought We need this thing needs a name, and so sat down with a couple of friends, came up with A name and it stuck and um

48:17 But but yeah, obviously from from day one it was pretty Pretty divisive with different groups. That's a fun story. Thanks for sharing that. Okay, so Talking about growth and helping companies figure out how to grow. So say

48:30 You go To a company. they're getting forty, say two percent. Forty two percent 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.

48:44 figure out how to grow. Ultimately it's it's about trying to get as many of the right people to that same state. that we just talked about with the with the must have user. 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

49:03 acquisition, which is how most companies think about, you know, initially it was awareness. Then maybe the more developed way was like, Oh, let's at least focus on Profitable acquisition. But

49:14 In my experience, uh You know, the The the hardest part is is is really sits inside the the product team. So at what 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

49:29 And that Ultimately, like we we understand what makes it a must have product, and then and then what we're trying to do is is Build a Yeah. Sounds kind of

49:39 theoretical here, but I I can go into the details on on how, but build a flywheel around that must have value. So Step one. Would be would be understand it. Step two. for me is is then

49:52 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 That's what I'm thinking about is is like some something that reflects

50:08 How many people are coming in and experiencing that 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 it's that ultimately Ultimately the team needs to decide that together. And then

50:23 And then really just diagramming what are What are all of the different ways That we can grow that that North Star metric. So that's that's where you start to actually build I I call it like a value delivery engine, but it's you know, what is our What does our onboarding look like? What's that that aha moment, that activation?

50:42 What 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

50:57 you know, starting to run experiments against those opportunities. generally I 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's That that one's just so critical and it's easy.

51:09 to get lost in between uh Especially for an early product, the product team's so focused on The roadmap. Like We're two features away from not even needing

51:19 Not even needing marketing anymore, this thing's gonna take off. And then And then a marketing team's so focused on like Bringing new people in. But the the how do you get those new people to a great first experience kinda falls through the cracks a lot of times. So a lot of focus on on activation and then

51:35 And then engagement and referral and getting getting the revenue model right. And then once once each of those pieces are are working well. than starting to really obsess on on the channel side. One thing that I'll say like when I go in and and directly and involve with a company On the acquisition side.

51:55 I am thinking about my c hypotheses on On the acquisition. Pretty early on. Because if I go into it and I have no idea How we'll acquire those customers.

52:06 I'm not I'm not real confident I'll figure it out when I'm there. So I wanna have like two or three things that seem pretty viable as as ways to uh 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 like

52:22 Five? One of them's likely to work. But I don't want to like just be under the pressure of having to come up with that once I come in if I if I

52:31 Don't at least see an angle from uh from from that before I get involved with the company. What I'm hearing is when you come into a company and they're asking Sean, how do we how do we figure out how to grow this thing? You actually focus first on Activation onboarding, and we're gonna talk about all these things.

52:46 Then after that, like basically these are priority order for you. Then it's Flywheel engagement referral stuff to see if there's a way to drive that. then revenue. How do we make money with this and how do we make make sure we're doing some of this profitably? And then only then does do you start to go big on acquisition top of final growth. Yeah. I may need to do some acquisition stuff before just to bring enough flow through, but I'm not I'm not obsessing on like how scalable is this. It's just like, yeah, let's get

53:13 Let's get enough people coming through that that we can we can start to Yeah. take take the slack out and part of it comes down to that the acquisition side is so competitive now. That If you're not really efficient at converting and retaining and monetizing customers, you just you can't find

53:29 scalable, profitable. Customer acquisition channels. This is fascinating because I think a lot of people are Probably do the opposite. start driving a bunch of growth to a product, then we'll fix onboarding, then we'll figure out how we're making money.

53:41 And referrals comes along there. So I think this is really important for people to hear. So again, the the reason you invest first and focus a lot on onboarding slash getting people activated. Is because that is very correlated to retention and this must have

53:56 customer that's like I'll be very disappointed customer. Yeah. And that's and they're you're they're at highest risk. risk of losing them at that point. They They're probably a little skeptical about a promise that you put out there. But they're intrigued enough to want to use it.

54:10 But Until until you get them to that must have experience, until you till you kind of get them to that aha moment, they they're at they're at high risk of of being lost. And so A lot of people focus on well, I better get their email address or their phone number. But then it then you're essentially having to reacquire them at that point. So so to me

54:28 Yeah, just that I you can collapse that that time to value. I'm I I'll give you a couple of Like

54:35 incredible examples of like what when we f so At Log Me In when we initially tried to grow the business, I was stuck at being able to spend, you know, I couldn't spend more than ten thousand dollars per month profitably trying to grow the business. And uh Then I dug into the data and I and I saw that

54:54 Ninety five percent of the people signing up for log me in. So um log me in free at the time free remote access for your computer and uh So You install software and you can control it from any other computer. So

55:08 Ninety five percent of the people signing up never once did a remote control session. And so not surprisingly then I'm I I had to get my kind of monetization off the five percent who did. that was really limiting my ability to to find channels that worked and so Are credit our CEO with this, that I I shared the data with him.

55:28 And he basically told the product team We are putting a complete freeze on the product development roadmap. So Every single person from product Engineering

55:38 Design. And then also said to me, Stop trying to find new channels. the the three of us on the marketing side. are all gonna focus on improving the sign up to usage rate. And so in three months we improved the sign up to usage rate.

55:52 By a thousand percent. So we went from Only five percent of people Using the product to fifty percent. I went back. tried the exact same channels that previously only scaled to to ten thousand.

56:04 Dollars a month. Now they scale to a million dollars a month with a three month payback on marketing dollars invested. Eighty percent of new users were coming in through word of mouth. So There was this this like major inflection point by just focusing on activation.

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57:29 activation. I know there's there's a million things that people do and but I guess What what are like three or four things that you think people should definitely try? to help improve activation and the onboarding conversion. One of my favorite quotes is a quote from a guy Kettering, who was early like a hundred years ago at GM running innovation, and and he says, A problem well stated is a problem half solved. And so

57:52 I think a lot of it comes down to not the things you try. But how you deeply understand the problem that's preventing someone from getting using your product effectively. And so Yeah, I I I'll just give you one example.

58:06 We we had one channel like it kinda after we made a lot of these changes and had already drove driven a ton of improvement in uh in the Log me in onboarding. We found a demand generation channel that was like really cheap and the the economics looked great.

58:22 But at the Just the download step, we had a ninety percent drop off rate. And so We A B test did a bunch of different things there to try to to try to improve that conversion rate. And then finally, um we we

58:36 you know, ten plus tests, not not able to improve it. Finally someone said, Well these people are registering Why don't we just ask them? Why they signed up? And didn't download the software.

58:46 And so we didn't want to do it in two kind of a creepy way. So we just said Yeah, m made it look like a note coming from customer service. We had This this channel was sending Two hundred thousand people a day. So twenty thousand twenty thousand people were converting to registering. So we had

59:01 Um essentially yeah, twenty thousand people we could email uh and then uh eighteen thousand of them who didn't download. And so we just ask, hey No, she haven't had a chance to use the product yet. It it looked like it was coming from customer support. What happened.

59:15 And the answer we got back and not a formal survey was Oh I just I just This seemed too good to be true. I didn't believe this was free. I mentioned to you we were one of the first uh Freemium SAS. products out there and so

59:30 People were skeptical when the especially in a demand gen channel where they hadn't sort of seen a radio or a TV advertisement from our competitor who was a premium only product. These are people who are kind of discovering the category for the first time. They were getting there. And so our next test, once we once we articulated what the problem was our next test gave us a three hundred percent improvement in the download rate. Which was a we gave him a choice.

59:54 Download a trial of the paid version. Or download the free version. Next to the free version. But when they saw we had a business model and a trial of a paid version.

1:00:06 the the free version was credible and so that that Essentially made that channel work for us. So I I think Again, it's a combination of qualitative research. looking at how others did it, we we had this um theory. Our previous company had been a game company that didn't require a download. So

1:00:21 Initially we had this theory that maybe maybe just downloadable software can't be in the millions of of new customers a month. And so we're we're being unrealistic here. But then we were like, are there any counterexamples to that? And like, No, the instant messengers are downloadable and they they have hundreds of millions of of customers. So Let's study there.

1:00:41 Download and install process and see if we have any ideas that we could borrow from that. So Again. Some inspiration, tried some of those things. Those it was a combination of just trying a a a bunch of different stuff that that ultimately Uh led to There there was no I wouldn't say there was one

1:00:56 Big gain. It was was a bunch of small gains. Awesome. Okay. So a few things for people to try if they're like, Hey, how do I improve my activation rate, how do I improve my conversion rate is Just like drill further into what is stopping people from progressing, like ask them why did you

1:01:13 Bounce here. Why did what did you Think this was gonna be why didn't you end up using this? Look for inspiration from other products. I think people probably already know that. You talked about earlier this idea of the positioning. Having a big

1:01:23 Impact of just like figuring out they want antivirus software. Let's make that very clear. Hey, we're we've got the best antivirus software. That's what we're here for. So there's probably just like messaging that you find works a lot of times. Right. I mean your two big levers on on driving a conversion are uh increased desire, reduced friction.

1:01:42 And so Yeah, you you definitely wanna increase The right desire. And then and so sometimes it can also just be reminding people along the way. Of what benefits you're gonna get.

1:01:53 Course, in the case of Log Me In it was It's probably the most complicated funnel I've ever seen because You You couldn't even get to the aha moment. while you're sitting in front of the computer. You had you had to actually

1:02:06 go to a different computer And to use the service to remote control the computer you're in front of. So it's not surprising that there was a like so many steps where we could lose people, but we just weren't that intentional about designing each of those steps initially. And it wasn't until we kinda thought through

1:02:24 Wha why would we lose someone at this step? And studying the data, which which steps were we losing the most people at Then deeply trying to contextualize Why are we losing them there? coming up with a a a set of tests that we want to run and then having a good way of deciding which one to to test first and And ultimately, uh you know, ultimately focusing the tests on the areas where we're losing the most people.

1:02:45 The other element of this is coming up with an activation metric and a lining on like here's what we Consider someone activated. I know this is very dependent on the product, but any advice or heuristic for how to help people decide this is our activated user. I tend to start qualitatively.

1:03:00 So just like when do I think they've had a good enough experience with the product? to to to really like Like know it. And so like in the case of L mean it was pretty easy. If they didn't do a remote control session They

1:03:14 They didn't use the pride. There was no value along the way there. And so And then at least try to see if there's a correlation to long term retention of doing that. causation is you you need to do some experimentation to to to prove causation. At the very least I want to see that correlation But

1:03:30 If if I start with Yeah, two or three. ideas of what it might be and then and then go and and study the data Yeah, thank that can help you focus. But again, I don't think there's like necessarily one exact right answer of what is what is that aha moment. There might be two or three different things. I think it's that

1:03:48 intentionality about picking something That's experience based and saying What is a likely experience that someone's gonna get a a a a good enough taste of this product? I And then I I do see some companies that are like Well

1:04:02 The the activation moment should be They've used it a hundred times. There he that that's gonna correlate to long term retention, but Yeah. It's just not very actionable it's so far.

1:04:14 down the user experience. So Ideally if there's a way that I could get them there in in the the first session in the first day. That's great. And so it's sort of Something that's value. that can be experienced super early.

1:04:26 Right. And actually give you an example from the first company I worked on was a game company. Where I actually flipped it in. Basically instead of making it a traditional funnel where they could play our games after they signed up. I made our games the advertisements. So basically

1:04:44 We syndicated our games to forty thousand websites. They started gameplay experience on the other website. Then they would get a message that they now have a qualifying score. And uh if they

1:04:58 If they register They they'll be in the drawing for the weekly cash prize. And then and then we could pull'em into multiplayer games on the site. And so it was It's kinda the the strategy that YouTube used to grow, but it was like two years before YouTube introduced the The approach.

1:05:14 Yeah, it feels like you basically created Zinga. That's what I'm hearing there. Okay, so let's move further down the funnel. So we've talked about Activation onboarding. The next phase that you focus on is basically some people call this growth loops.

1:05:27 Growth engines, flywheels. Basically it's like the thing that helps your business grow. And something I I'm curious if this resonates, I found there's basically Four ways to grow. And Usually one of these engines is responsible for almost all of your growth.

1:05:43 So what I've seen is basically it's you're gonna go through sales, you're gonna go through SEO. You're gonna go through Virality word of mouth. Or paid growth. Does that resonate? Does that feel right? Yeah.

1:05:53 And I wouldn't say it's necessarily one or the other. Like I I think um I think uh bounce is a really interesting example. where SEO was super important for for bounce and uh is super important for bounce. Um So people who are essentially saying

1:06:09 Luggage storage, Paris, luggage storage Yeah, all Most people when they're trying to find a place to store their luggage, they're they're starting with Google. But at the same time a huge percentage of the people who who use bounce are Dragging their their bag down a down a street.

1:06:26 over you know over cobblestones in Paris and then they then they pass a sign that says store your bag here for five dollars a day. And and it's like Oh. No brainer. And and so ten thousand partners around the world

1:06:38 means that there's there's a lot of people kind of in the right situation on the demand gen side. So yeah, one one would be I actually think of kind of like Um I'm not sure how it would map to this, but like demand generation versus demand harvesting. And so You know, one of those examples would be a demand uh generation example, like when you see the signs when you're passing

1:06:59 It's like high context, right, right place. And then obviously the demand harvesting would be Anyone who's who's Googling and so that There's paid They do paid search and and organic search there. Interesting.

1:07:11 Uh, I don't see that like that sign approach work often, but I definitely have seen it work. Like Yelp, I think grew in a lot of ways of just like little Yelp stickers on all the restaurants. Door dash, I think probably grew through that. Yeah, I think every every business could be a little bit different, but um for bounce it makes sense that that would be a really good uh opportunity for them. How do you help a business figure out which area to bet on? Like whether they should go paid, whether they should go SEO whether they should Higher sales. That's sales probably an easier one of like probably B to B, you're probably gonna have to do a sales team.

1:07:42 I guess just to help them pick like here's where you have a big opportunity. Again, it kinda comes down like As I'm as I'm going into it, I'm I'm thinking what what are the realistic customer acquisition angles for this business and I wanna have Yeah, ideally two or three.

1:07:58 that I'm I'm coming into it with, but it's gonna Yeah, obviously like Like Dropbox is a classic one of like oh man, this this product User get user is gonna be just like a a a classic there there's Yeah, file share built into it, folder collaboration. There's so many

1:08:14 pieces of it that that cross from one user to the next. But but interestingly. It was fairly similar to Log Me In in some senses, as kinda solving Two two businesses that are solving

1:08:26 similar in in in different ways. Where Log Me In We grew Almost entirely off of paid search. And and part of it again is that uh

1:08:37 for for us we had We had a um competitor that was spending Yeah, tens of millions of dollars a month. creating the category with a premium only product, um through radio and TV advertising go to my P C they were just

1:08:51 creating all this latent demand, and so it just made sense for us To disrupt them with a freemium service and and to it insert ourselves in in the flow of someone Like what was that?

1:09:04 thing that I heard about on the TV commercial and Now they go and they Google it and Yeah. Same thing but free. So we w weren't really pushing for differentiation, but just really, you know, trying to harvest that. So I couldn't do that at Dropbox. Like no one was looking for Dropbox when I went there and so Yeah, we we we tried a little bit with with search to see can we can we make it work on, you know

1:09:27 cloud storage or backup or kind of going to some of these like traditional category and Call Storms wasn't even a traditional category at that point, but Backup was. And it's just like the It was fairly expensive, um to to be on and there was just not that much demand there that way. And so

1:09:43 It just made more sense to to focus on the user get user loops at At Dropbox. So I think I basically for for each business it's um It's just thinking about what's what's unique for that that business.

1:09:58 That um is is gonna open up channel opportunities and everyone's gonna be a little bit I think jaded from Whatever the last thing that worked really well, they're gonna think they can they can apply it in the next business. But um af after enough times myself, I've just Yeah.

1:10:14 I tend to get the most inspiration by just talking Two to customers and and finding out How how did they find it? How do they typically find something like that and and that starts to give me some ideas as well.

1:10:28 I think that last point is really powerful and I'm just writing it down, he said so Essentially. One of your tactics is talking to users, asking them how did you find this product and how do you normally find products like this? Was that the second question? I I think that's that's like such a it's like similar to your stars test. Uh it's such a simple

1:10:46 question but it's so Powerful because How else will people find your product? It's they go to a place to find stuff like this. Yeah. And like they I Google search I search Google for Folder sharing, like Like there's so much

1:11:00 There. I think the reason that you don't actually Kind of here. people taking the obvious there a lot of times is because um And I I w I used to be in the same thing that

1:11:13 People tend to be either over indexed on qualitative or over indexed on on quantitative. So it's so kinda like Yeah. Analytics? I'm gonna get all my answers from from testing and analytics or I'm gonna get all my answers from

1:11:26 traditional customer research. And I I was very much in that initial camp for the first five years of my career. I'm just gonna measure everything and test the heck out of things and and find stuff that works, but I had a uh V C who um was our lead V C at at Log Me In, he just said When was the last time you talked to a customer?

1:11:44 Just like pushed me to survey and talk to customers all the time and and um At first I was like Yeah. G gave the smart ass answer. I don't care what they say, I care what they do, and that's that's what you know, he's like, No, you gotta talk to'em. Then then just to appease him, I would I would try to have a conversation every day'cause he was in our office a lot. And so I could say

1:12:03 Hey, yeah, I talked to a customer today when he when he would ask me And then I started finding that my experiments were so much better. the more I talked to customers and and you know, eventually I I became very much the blend of of qualitative and quantitative research. leads to much better tests.

1:12:21 That is another amazing story and insight. It's so interesting that people Sometimes think of you as a growth hacker guy, experiment data. When most of the advice you've been sharing so far is very qualitative driven. Very survey driven, talking to customers driven. Yeah. And it's it's just really hard to

1:12:37 run good experiments when you can't deeply contextualize what's going on. I love this. By the way, I I don't know if I knew this, so you helped develop the Dropbox Referral program? I was there at the time. I basically when I um Even when I first started

1:12:52 Talking with With Drew before I Came in I was like the way we're gonna grow this business is by leveraging the really passionate customer base and

1:13:03 That's what we need to double down on and uh And We we had tried a a similar kind of referral program at Zodney and my friend who actually started uh You started ring. Um Jamie Simenov had previously uh

1:13:18 had a company called Phone Tag like Way way before Ring. And he had actually done a lot of the testing on kind of double sided referral programs and and Yeah. having having incentive on both sides and he s he found that that worked the best and so I

1:13:35 between what we had tested at Zodney and those conversations with him I I hadn't actually seen PayPal. yet at that point what they were doing. But yeah, that that was kind of like yeah, we it it seems like a referral program where we have incentives on both sides.

1:13:49 Is the best way to go. Interestingly, yeah. Six months before I was at Dropbox, I was at Log Me In and um I really thought about having incentivized referrals that log me in.

1:14:01 But eighty percent of our new users were coming in through word of mouth. I and you know, we had a hundred million devices connected in on our on our system. And I was I was just so afraid of breaking this growth engine by adding an incentive. that I I I didn't want to risk it. But at Dropbox it was so early that that yeah, I

1:14:21 I I would still say like No experiment is one person. It it happened to be when I was there. I had some insights that I brought in, but but ultimately the guy who built it, um, was actually an intern named Albert Mee. And uh he end up dropping out like out of MIT to

1:14:36 To stay with the Dropbox for for a few years after that. But um but yeah, we we he was kind of my right hand guy to Uh. collaborating on growth day to day. Wow.

1:14:47 Uh I I would say Drawbox is a referral program and the PayPal referral program, as you mentioned, are the two most Legendary studied copied referral frame out there. And unfortunately Like I think that what they don't realize is that before the referral program Dropbox had amazing referral rate. You know, like they're they're kind of

1:15:05 Companies that are trying to copy it are are like Why isn't anyone talking about a product? Let's add a referral program with incentives like um to to me, I think it's it's A great accelerant when it's already working. But it it can't It can't fix it if if people

1:15:21 Don't wanna don't wanna talk about your product. That's an awesome point and something I was just gonna ask about. And just kinda coming back to this topic of growing engagement, growing referrals as a as a growth mechanism. What do you look for to tell you that there's an opportunity there?

1:15:36 And I'll just answer it partly is I've seen exactly what you just said, which is You need to already have strong word of mouth growth'cause referrals kind of sits on that and gives you a little more incentive to share. So maybe sh Do you agree with that, not agreeing that any other advice on

1:15:49 helping figure out is there some kind of loop here that we can build. Well one thing I will say is like I I Freemium when we first started with it, as I said, we're like we we were one of the first with it. Um The

1:16:01 So it t it took me a while. figure out exactly how freemium worked, but to me Uh Freemium. to t towards having a free and a premium version of your of your product.

1:16:11 To really work in any business. It it needs to be that your free product is so good that people naturally have word of mouth around that product and then To be economically viable. You have to have a a premium product that's that's

1:16:26 Better enough and differentiated enough that people are gonna upgrade to the the premium product, but I think a lot of times people are so worried about the second part. That they Make

1:16:36 The free version. not very good. And then they're surprised when when word of mouth isn't very strong there. So I think you you have to essentially have products that are are great. On their own.

1:16:50 So that would that would be the one piece and and So But then Obviously companies that have any kind of uh collaborative layer to them are are are gonna benefit from Or are gonna be more likely to

1:17:03 work well with referral. And then I think on the engagement side, uh, a lot of it comes down to just the nature of the product. Like Yeah. Airbnb. You're not gonna use it every day, you know like unless you're unless you're You know, like a

1:17:18 vagrant or something maybe, but and then you won't have money to pay for it. But the um So so there there's kind of a a natural Usage. Cycle of products and and you want to be able to

1:17:29 to maximize against that cycle. And I think that's where I was saying yeah, coming back to the the the hooked model I think is is a really good way to help to have a framework to think about how do I improve engagement. Um, one good counterexample to to that though of the kind of natural

1:17:45 the natural um frequency of using a product is is Facebook when they changed their North Star metric from Monthly active users to daily active users. I think

1:17:57 Again, just just having, you know, what gets measured gets managed like Um once Once Facebook was on a daily active user goal. the team suddenly had a lot more incentive to think about how do how do I bring people back every day and use this product where

1:18:15 when it was monthly active users. They they kinda only got credit for that person. for for using once in that month. And even if they use ten times they didn't get Ten times a credit. It was just like a Oh, that's cool too, but they they weren't sort of measured on that. And so

1:18:29 I think it was sort of a random decision for Mark Zuckerberg to move from a Uh. monthly active to a daily active because they hit one billion monthly active users and they're like, Okay, let's go for one billion daily active users. But

1:18:42 it it had a a really big impact on making that product Way more than addictive to the point where obviously they uh ended up in Congress for for uh you know, or or or get a lot of pushback. I'm not sure they got went to Congress for that, but they got a lot of pushback for having a product that's maybe too addictive and the same thing carrying into Instagram and some of the other um

1:19:04 Meta products or basically anything that is Yeah. highly engaging, um So So I I I do think, you know, the right incentives can actually help a team to to to focus on it. And um and then but there's gonna be sort of a natural usage cycle to any product as well.

1:19:22 I'm glad you mentioned North Star Metric. I actually have a postable link to in the show notes where it I collected the North Star metrics of thirty different companies to give you some inspiration. I know this is a deep topic of its own, but just when someone is trying to pick their own North Star metric, which I one thousand percent agree. Informs so much about how your company operates. It basically focuses everyone's incentives to let's drive this thing and that changes so much of

1:19:44 What you're building. Uh And you just like bullet point piece of advice for helping you pick. You're not star metric. I start with uh the value that's uncovered through the

1:19:54 Yeah. Cheless test. So with a company, I'll say okay, this is This is what the must have value is according to our most passionate customers.

1:20:03 And we want to think about a metric that reflects us delivering that value and then I'll then I'll give them kind of a framework of ways to to think about a North Star metric, but I think it's really important for it to be A a time capped. group conversation.

1:20:20 And if if we give a team thirty days, they'll take thirty days. If you give them six months, they'll take six months. But so I think generally a team can come up with a pretty good North Star metric. After thirty minutes of uh If they have like the right kinda raw ingredients and a and a checklist of what's im important in a North Star metric, like something

1:20:38 that it's not a ratio. It's something that can be up and to the right over time, so you can keep managing it and and uh you know feeling good. It should It should correlate to revenue growth, but not necessarily like rev revenue shouldn't be the Sho it shouldn't be the North Star metric, but you know, as as you As you grow value across your customer base, you should be able to grow

1:21:00 uh revenue at the uh at at the same rate. And so there there's there's some other things, but I think that would be the the most important is that it's Uh something that could be up and to the right over time and reflects value that you're delivering to customers. Well, and I was gonna ask about revenue in your opinion there and so your advice is. don't make revenue or North Star Metric. No, and even Amazon, um, and again, like this is just what I know of Amazons as being, but um

1:21:23 Monthly purchases. Um But yeah, someone else might say Amazon No, Amazon's is Yeah, G M V or something, but Like I think monthly purchases

1:21:33 is is great because it it like um maps to value uh that people are getting from Amazon and so Um Yeah, even if I spend, say, a thousand dollars on a T V set with with Amazon versus Yeah.

1:21:48 three dollars on a yeah or ten dollars on an electric toothbrush. Um Amazon from the consumer's perspective delivered the same value. I needed something, Amazon helped me find that thing. And so units of value from the customer perspective, I think is more important than uh

1:22:04 than yeah, overall revenue, but clearly Clearly. with Amazon focusing on driving more monthly purchases, at least on their on their store side of the business. That has helped them become one of the most valuable companies in the world. So I I think

1:22:21 Yeah, focusing on value is is Oh, revenue should be a a a byproduct of doing things right. It shouldn't it shouldn't kind of guide your day to day actions. To make this even more concrete for people, are there some North Star metric examples you could share that you've seen that are good, like say for Ventbrite or Dropbox or any companies? you've worked with and I'll share one real quick as you're thinking about it. Uh an Airbnb was or N Arsturmetric was Knight's book.

1:22:43 And so it It's similar to Amazon. It's not like the money Airbnb made from Bookings, but it's like nights booked. And it It was really

1:22:51 And basically every experiment we're in is like is this increasing night's book or is this decreasing night's book? And so that's that that's like a really good marketplace one Uber, obviously, you know, weekly rides. I I'm always surprised with the with the Airbnb that it's There's not a kind of

1:23:07 Time piece on it. Like the weekly rides that you have with Uber. But Maybe maybe it's'cause it's such an infrequent use case on travel that it Doesn't make sense to

1:23:16 To focus on. Yeah. Yeah. Why why is the time frame important to you? Why have you Why do you encourage that? Um, I just, you know, daily active users. You saw the difference between monthly active users and daily active users could could change behavior a lot at Facebook. Um

1:23:32 Yeah, yeah, uh Gives you like a quantifiable way if you just kind of taking an aggregate number over time, it always looks like it's going up. So it's an engagement element of how often are they engaging? Yeah.

1:23:45 Mm. But any others? Any others real quick? Yeah. I mean, I didn't really think about North Star Metrics when I was at Dropbox in Eventbrite. You know, I didn't like the the term itself, but I was thinking about what is what is a valuable experience with Dropbox and how do I get people to have that more time, but Like I don't even know what they go with today, but maybe like, you know files files and drop out files access might be better than just files

1:24:09 Yeah. hosted um And then Probably for Eventbrite again, I would say like uh weekly tickets or something something like you could say weekly events, but then you have events that don't sell any tickets where

1:24:23 Weekly tickets would be more likely to reflect E events are gonna be happy if they're selling tickets and um Yeah. Okay. Sean, we've gone through so much stuff. I I have

1:24:34 I'm trying to limit how many more questions we get through just so that we don't We're going long. We're going long, which is amazing. I think there's so much value here that we're collecting for folks, so let me just ask maybe a couple more quick questions. One is actually from Andrew Chen, who

1:24:48 Uh it's currently partnered at A sixteen Z. He was he wrote about growth for the longest time. He I think he helped Popularized growth hacking for better or worse with his article and It being the future of VP of what is it? Growth hacking is the new VP of marketing, right? Is that the title? So he actually had a question for you that he shared with me. His question is Growth strategies have changed a lot over the past decade.

1:25:09 What is the biggest difference now versus When you first started. Working on growth. When I first started Just being data driven on customer acquisition.

1:25:19 was enough to win. And yeah, being test and data driven on customer acquisition. All the other companies were were like CPM focused and and Yeah, it's a so like we we could

1:25:32 We could do really well just just with lots of testing and and some creativity in it. how it all worked. But um That Over time as as now I would say most marketers are very most online marketers are very like data and test driven. they they know they needed lots of testing and so

1:25:51 To be competitive today. You actually have to be able to be super efficient at all parts of the business. So Yeah, again, like how how how you Convert.

1:26:02 retain, monetize and And that's when it gets hard. Getting Getting a marketing team to be To to be data and test driven is pretty easy.

1:26:14 once you start getting into activation and referral and engagement and retention. Now you're talking about the overlap between marketing product, if it's B to B, bringing sales in there, customer success. And those teams are not used to working together. And so it's it's really hard to

1:26:34 to to drive the collaboration that's needed to to have an effective testing program. across the entire growth engine and and That's Pretty much any business that's been successful with it. implemented it super early in the business. And so very, very few later stage companies have have been able to make much progress in in replicating that type of approach.

1:26:55 It's just gotten harder, basically. Things are just getting harder. I think it's um I think it's possible. So it's what I obsess about all the time is how how how do you how do you get cross functional teams working together on growth now and It's still a huge advantage when you can pull it off. Okay.

1:27:13 Totally unrelated question going in completely different direction as we close out our chat. So you uh came up with ICE, the very popular way of prioritizing work. Uh, which is crazy. I did not know that. Till I started prepping for this conversation. What's your thoughts on rice, the uh intercom uh version of rice.

1:27:32 Where R stands for reach, I believe, uh thoughts. So I think I think it's an unnecessary addition, but maybe it's I'm just being protective of my original idea. That that

1:27:44 The I in ICE is impact and it's essentially saying best case scenario How much impact could we get from this? And reach is a is a super important part of impact. And so Like I think it's already factored in the eye in ice and so I think if there's anything that I would be accused of, it would be being over simplifying things and um and there's

1:28:08 I'm not saying them, but there's there's there's a lot of people who approach things with there's gotta be a more complex way to approach this and and that's just not me. And so Yeah, I yeah. More testing is better. Like that's

1:28:21 No, it doesn't just work like that. I mean Better tests are better than Bad test, but just If you had to hold yourself accountable to anything, more testing would be better and so

1:28:30 I think I just one Chris quick note on ICE is that um Yeah. in order to be able to effectively run a high velocity testing program. You need to be able to source ideas from across the company.

1:28:44 And That's why I came up with ICE, that if you If you're having people submit ideas and you can't tell them why their idea was not chosen, they're just gonna get upset and and you're gonna waste a lot of time. But if you have a systematic way of being able to compare ideas.

1:29:01 It's it's more likely that people be able to get it and they'll be able to come up with better ideas. I love the way you think, Sean. I have a post on prototypation where I basically just make the same argument that there's all these fancy, complicated ways to prototyze in the end it's just impact confidence and effort and

1:29:16 It really works. And rarely is more work. No, sir. On the other hand, I do also have a guest post called Drice. by these two guys called Detail Rice, which actually I think is a really good point, where sometimes it's worth spending Like thirty minutes per Idea.

1:29:33 to just really estimate how long will it take to to avoid doing things that are just gonna not work and very unlikely to work. Basically doing this reach piece, uh and spending the time to do a right. And I think there's a lot of good value there. Yeah, and that's w um what what I think's gonna be really interesting is that uh over time I think AI is going to

1:29:53 is going to actually change our ability to model out potential outcomes on experiments and start to Whether whether it's a more informed way of doing ice or replaces ice that that ultimately, you know pro probability of outcomes is is something that

1:30:10 A I will be pretty good at. Well, amazing segue to the final question. The actually final question is I wanted to ask you about h any ways you've been using AI or ways you think AI will impact the work you're doing or other folks are doing and maybe just answered it, but Uh you tell me. No, I'll I'll uh I'll touch on a couple um

1:30:28 One is that uh Probably the the funnest way that I'm using it today. Like that obviously I've I've I've done it for coming up with experiment ideas, but the The the funnest way I personally use it is I get a lot of people asking me for advice and I don't have very much time to Answer. Yeah.

1:30:46 with thoughtful answers to people and so Almost every question that I get, I I go to Chat GPT and say, How would Sean Ellis answer this? And it's gives me an initial draft to to like make a couple of tweaks and and um it definitely allows me to answer a lot more. So it helps to have a A book that's indexed. in there and lots of writing. That is so funny. And is that the question? That's the simp as simple as the prompt is, how would Sean Ellis answered. Yeah, because I know a lot of times it'll say Sean Ellis, author of hack and growth da believes that, you know, and then and then it'll like help obviously pull that part out in the answer.

1:31:21 Oh my god. It's like you're one step away from a Chrome extension or something that just automatically plugs that into your Yeah, exactly. I can and I can even start to have my um you know personal system maybe start to answer some of those questions as me. Um but I I'm a little bit afraid to send something without without reviewing it first,'cause sometimes there's Sometimes there's stuff that's pretty different from how I would answer it. But longer term I actually think Yeah, as I said, I think the cross functional challenge to growth is

1:31:47 is a thing that holds a lot of companies back from being able to implement this a bit later. Mostly like Yeah, product teams don't want to be get direction from marketing teams, don't want to get direct marketing teams don't want to get direction from product teams and and you know, maybe a growth layer can can help to do these things, but um I I find that, you know, like if if AI is essentially saying

1:32:08 You're underperforming in this area of your business. You should drive some experiments in this area, it's just it's a lot harder to kind of let ego get in the way when when it's kind of dispassionate. recommendations from a system and so

1:32:22 I actually think I think the ability to come up with with great experiments that's gonna keep keep growing with AI and you know identifying opportunities and then obviously like The analytical AI side of things. It's gonna be really exciting in terms of uh

1:32:38 Yeah. I do find with most companies once once we get a real high velocity of experiments going. the bottleneck ends up happening more on the analysis side and and I think AI will help a lot with that as well. Super cool. These are awesome examples.

1:32:53 Okay, Sean, is there anything else you wanted to share our leave listeners with before we get to our very exciting light and run, which we'll go through real fast'cause we've gone very long and I wanna let you go. Yeah, as I as I've gone through and done a lot of uh workshops and programs with companies. I keep coming back to this advice that I that I heard from uh Guy Oleg Yakubinkov, which is um it it often comes down to asking the right question at the right time.

1:33:17 in in how you figure things out and he's a he's a former former data scientist from From meta. And so Yeah, where he basically boils data science down to learning how to ask the right questions. And so um I actually have a a course with him. call go practice.io where

1:33:34 That's that's really the big benefit of the course is to learn how to ask the right questions. And yeah, you learn how to query them in amplitude. But but more importantly. uh to being able to ask the right question. I think it's it's kinda cool to hear that from a a a data scientist from meta that the importance of that, but Every time I'm going through exercises in my in my workshops.

1:33:55 it almost always comes down to people who who Aren't able to come up with the right. Or or a good answer for a challenging In a business.

1:34:04 It's because they're not asking the obvious question. And and Soon as they had like Why aren't users downloading the software? Let's let's Let's just ask them that question. Like that would be one example from my my workshop. Yeah. Who considers the product a must have?

1:34:19 That that part of getting Yeah, to uh the uh f figuring out the must ha must have Kind of uh benefit that that then allows you to to to hone in on product market fit. And so Yeah, right questions, right time.

1:34:33 I think is a is a really important uh way to think about uh growth and even getting to product market fit. I love this advice'cause I think it gives us a glimpse into how your brain has developed these really simple, seemingly simple ideas that end up being really powerful. And it feels like

1:34:51 The advice is just Think a lot about the question you need to ask because that'll get you just Something that a lot of people just kind of under underthink or don't Yeah, or they just jump right into the solution side of things where they're where they're not really trying to understand what's going on. Yeah, amazing.

1:35:10 Okay, well with that, Sean, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? I am. All right. What are two or three books you've recommended most to other people? Increasingly I I'm recommending a book called Presenting to Win, that's been around forever, but um it really helped me with my my presenting and so of course when I'm Oh, travelling.

1:35:31 Um often sharing the stage with other speakers and uh and yeah, I I Like to recommend that one to them. I've I've already talked about um Miral's hooked, I recommend that.

1:35:41 Always And Oh well just stick with two. That that that that's a good two. Within within presenting to win, is there one tip that you sticks with you of like here's something that really helped me be a better presenter? ultimately like confidence in presenting comes down to having very well organized information that you're going to present.

1:35:59 And when you organize it correctly. you are much more likely to deliver it with confidence. And so he he basically says if I had a presentation to do and I had An hour to present. I spend fifty five minutes creating the right presentation and then five minutes practicing it and uh

1:36:16 But yeah, there's a lot more to it. But that's Yeah, amazing. Okay, we'll link to that book in the show notes. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed? Yeah. So I've been

1:36:25 Binging the Olympics. I love that. Just you know, watching people who like Work there. ass off for years and then maybe have thirty seconds to do the thing that they worked hard for. So Olympics have been awesome and then um And then the movie, um, I actually just saw Blackberry. I don't know if you've seen that. Oh the uh the like the story of the Blackberry. Yeah, I mean obviously like we all kinda know the story, but it was uh

1:36:48 So really, I mean it's it's a classic example of like Product market fit. And then not Actually it's probably even a counterexample to the dangers of the Uh, how would you feel if you could no longer use this product?

1:37:00 pretty sure most people would have said on Blackberry It's the keyboard. And Yeah, until until iPhone came along. Yeah, the keyboard was super important and then suddenly it wasn't. But yeah, it's also

1:37:12 Also uh interesting on like egos and And other things that like everybody's good and friendly in the beginning and then uh and then egos take over and things get a lot harder later on. That was actually a really good movie. Uh There's also an amazing movie called Tetris, for some reason, I think of these two together. Okay. About the story of Tetris, and there's like some it's like a similar parallels to those two movies. Awesome, I'll have to see that one. Next question. Do you have a favorite product you recently discovered that you really love?

1:37:39 I forget the name of it, but it's it's I think well, it's called Pack Gear. Hanging suitcase. Yeah. I uh Basically like I I've done almost a hundred thousand miles in travel this year and um

1:37:52 I have another trip schedule for next week and I I love it because it basically has all my clothes folded in this like little little insert that goes into my suitcase and then I just pull it out and hang it up and um Makes makes travel way easier. Called the pack gear suitcase.

1:38:08 Hack Gear hanging suitcase organizer. So cool. Gonna check that out. Uh, two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to that you find useful in work or in life, maybe share with friends and family sometimes? Focus on on reputation and learning. over earnings um has just served me super well that um and I'll give you an example I had

1:38:30 I had Two companies when I was doing a lot of this early interim stuff. Yeah, ten. Plus years ago.

1:38:38 And um I had two of them where I talked to the the the founders afterwards and I could tell they weren't like that stoked on my contributions. And I offered a full refund to both of them. With the thought that like

1:38:52 I have this reputation that's that's like I randomly pulled the number and said my reputation worth five million dollars. Why would I possibly Yeah. mortgage that reputation for twenty thousand dollars. And so

1:39:04 Yeah, one of them I I gave the the the check back to them and he we was happy to take it and then uh but he had said, Oh, you can make it up to me. You could you know, like I don't you don't have to give me the check, just Make it up to me by continue to help me. for an unlimited amount of time going forward. I was like, Oh take the check. And then the other one said, No, no, I like I'm I'm actually really happy with what you did. We're we're fine, but

1:39:26 The two VCs who had made those introductions were the first two to give me term sheets when I went out to raise money for my company and the uh pre money ultimately ended up being valued at more than double what I had put my personal reputation out. So I yeah, I think the yeah, um unfortunately the company didn't do that well itself because of the elusive

1:39:48 Product market fit challenges. But yeah, the the learning there of yeah. Just fo focus on learning and reputation. reputation opened the door to more and more learning. And as I got more learning, the reputation grew. And so um yeah.

1:40:04 There's a really good c corollary there with customer support. Like if someone just hates your product and wants a refund, just give it the give them a refund. And let him move on versus being upset. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Final question. You mentioned to me when we before we started recording that you were maybe indirectly responsible for TikToks. Success.

1:40:22 Uh Maybe share that story. Yeah. I mean I I don't wanna overstate it, but I uh yeah, my trip around the world that I did, um uh

1:40:32 Yeah. three months ago, I think I wrapped it up. I met with the original founding growth team at TikTok, they're based in Singapore and they had I can't remember what the previous product was called, but they they started with the previous product. And then when TikTok came, they they they were in place to be the initial growth team for

1:40:51 for TikTok and they basically said All the early stuff we did to grow TikTok was based on your writing. So that was that was before the book came out. So it's a lot of just blogging that I had done, but um but was really Really cool to get that feedback that um

1:41:06 But yeah, I I I've always said I've I I have some really good wins. I've s a lot of unicorns that I I helped, but None of the really, really big guys and then uh to hear that, it w it felt really good to know that I I played some kind of role in TikTok. Of course.

1:41:21 Uh almost the same week they told me that that was uh, you know, Congress. having uh TikTok band conversations, so It w it was it was good and at the same time knowing that maybe if they hadn't read my stuff, Congress wouldn't be wasting their time on TikTok bands. Oh man. Bittersweet. I hope they don't pull you into some hearings. Sean, this was incredible. This was everything I was hoping it'd be. I feel like we

1:41:44 collected is so much wisdom here for folks to help them figure out product market fit, find product market fit, iterate, grow other product. So happy we did this. Two final questions. Where can folks find stuff that you're up to, if they want to learn more and maybe work with you in various ways?

1:41:58 And how can listeners be useful to you? Awesome. Yeah. Um, so Sean Ellis dot ME is the website where I kinda link to all the things that I'm doing and so that would be one place where you know and there's contact forms on there if anyone wants to Reach out, obviously LinkedIn people can can contact me there. Uh and then I did mention GoPractice, so go practice.io. Um really cool way to learn growth through a simulated environment of being able to to try to grow products. So

1:42:26 Check out uh check out Go Practice and uh maybe a Go to Sean Ellis. M when this comes out. I'll I'll put a special offer on there for Lenny's listeners so you can save some money. And there's also a L M AI kind of uh I wasn't directly involved on that one, but there's yeah, there's there's some other really cool stuff that Oleg and the team are doing. I've I've been data driven product management and uh and the uh user growth programs are the ones that I helped with. Awesome. And then for folks if they're wondering, do you

1:42:55 Do advising. How do you help with comp how do you work with companies in case they're like, Hey, I need Sean? Yeah, I mean so the the sweet on companies that I go hands on with are Ideally pretty early, uh, just after they get to product market fit. And now you know how to measure it. So like If you're

1:43:13 kind of pre-scale, but you're you're seeing that forty percent. Or even if you're a bit earlier than that, we can start talking earlier, but to me, That's my favorite time to get in there. Build it right from the beginning. It's so hard to retroactively do these things and uh And I'll I'll go in for three to six months and and I'm I'm all in full time, one of the team trying to trying to really help build traction in the business. I d I do

1:43:37 One of those every every maybe year or uh Maybe every year or two. 'Cause I I purposely burn myself out and then have fun doing more uh Lecturing and workshops and stuff. Awesome. Well you might get a flood of requests uh after this comes out.

1:43:53 Hope you're ready. Uh, Sean, thank you so much for being here. Awesome. Thank you, Lenny. I really appreciate you having me on. Hi everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast.

1:44:16 You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's Podcast.com. See you in the next episode.

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