WhoBuilt

Scaling Growth

Jun 23, 2017· 35 min· 19K views·Watch on YouTube
#Experimentation#Growth & Distribution#Product Analytics

Speakers

Gustaf Alströmerhelped grow the growth team from about three people to about 220 at Airbnb
Ed Bakergrowth team member at Meta

Y Combinator partners Gustaf Alströmer, formerly of Airbnb, and Ed Baker, formerly of Uber, discuss building growth teams and scaling users at a scale-up offsite.

Learning through viral experiments

Baker describes experimenting with Facebook apps after the platform launched in 2007, including Zodiac Photo Album, which tagged up to 240 friends at once and reached tens of millions of people. Alströmer says new platforms such as mobile and push notifications create fresh opportunities to learn how products can grow.

Growth shifts from acquisition to retention

At Facebook, Baker saw that strong retention and engagement mattered more than acquiring the first million users. Friending was a key driver, so teams worked on features such as People You May Know. He says the growth team brought product, engineering, analytics, design, and marketing together.

Choosing metrics for a two-sided marketplace

Baker says Uber used weekly trips as its North Star metric because every trip requires both a rider and a driver. Growth accounting helped the team track new users, churn, and re-engagement on each side. He also describes the challenge of measuring offline steps, including getting a new driver through their first trip.

Combining paid growth with local operations

Alströmer says paid marketing at scale benefits from engineering, data science, and product support. Baker explains that acquisition spending can speed growth when network effects make a larger marketplace more efficient, though the value of a rider or driver varies by market. Uber paired a reusable launch playbook with local teams, and used a WeChat bot to simplify driver sign-ups in China.

Scaling experimentation across the company

Baker describes experiment reviews where teams guess which version won before seeing results, illustrating how hard product outcomes are to predict. Alströmer shares how changing Facebook's signup wording in Japan from invites to announcements increased sharing. Both say growth practices should spread across product teams; Uber eventually merged its product and growth teams.

Takeaways

  • Test ideas often; repeated experiments build better intuition than relying on predictions.
  • Choose a North Star metric that reflects how the product creates value, including both sides of a marketplace.
  • Use growth accounting to see whether acquisition, retention, or re-engagement is the biggest lever at your current scale.
  • Look for offline friction in the customer journey, such as the anxiety a new driver may feel before a first trip.
  • Small changes in wording can reduce social friction and materially change user behavior.

Mentioned in this talk

UberAirbnbDiigoMetaFriendFeedHeysanVoxerFacebook PlatformZodiac Photo AlbumDuolingo push notificationsWeChatiOSaddress book matchinggrowth teamsA/B testingSEONorth Star metricgrowth accountingpaid marketingProduct Opsexperiment review

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