Scaling Growth

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.