20Growth: Five Key Functions of a Growth Team, The Biggest Lessons Starting Uber's Growth Team and Scaling Facebook's, How To Structure The Hiring Process for Growth and What Separates Good From Great in Growth Leaders with Ed Baker, Former VP of Growth @

Ed Baker is an angel investor and growth advisor to various startups including Lime, Zwift, Whoop, Crimson Education, GoPeer, and Playbook. Ed was the VP of Product and Growth at Uber from 2013-2017. Prior to Uber, Ed was the Head of International Growth at Facebook, a company he joined after they acquired a startup he co-founded called Friend.ly, which had grown to over 25 million users. In Today’s Episode with Ed Baker You Will Learn: 1.) Ed Baker: Entry into Growth: How Ed made his way into the world of growth from his start founding a dating site while at Harvard? How he made his way to lead international growth at Facebook? How his time with Facebook led to his joing Uber to start Uber's growth team? What were Ed's biggest lessons from Uber and Facebook? How did his approach to growth and mindset change as a result of his time there? 2.) When is the Right Time: When is the right time for startups to hire their first growth leads or reps? How should they determine whether to promote from within or hire externally? What are the biggest mistakes startups make on the timing of this hire? How can startups accurately assess whether they have product-market-fit? 3.) Who To Hire: Step by step, how does Ed structure the interview process for all new growth hires? What are the must ask questions for growth leaders to ask candidates in interviews? What are the clear signs and answers that suggest a 10x growth hire? What literal tests does Ed do to determine the quality of a hire? How do the best perform? 4.) Onboarding and Integration: What is the optimal onboarding process for all new growth hires? How do the best growth hires start in the first 60 days? What do they achieve? What are some of the early signs that a growth hire is not working out? How should the relationship be between the CEO and the Head of Growth? How can the Head of Growth foster a strong relationship between growth and product teams?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  This is 20 Growth with me, Harry Stebbings. Now, 20 Growth is a monthly show where I sit down with some of the best growth leaders in the world to uncover their tips, tactics, strategies and tooling when it comes to both growth and scaling growth teams. Today, I'm so excited to be joined by Ed Baker. Now, Ed is an angel investor and growth advisor to various startups, including Lime, SwifT, Whoop, Crimson Education, GoPeer and Playbook. And previously, Ed was the VP of Product and Growth at Uber from 2013 to 2017 during an incredible period of hypergrowth for the company. Prior to Uber, Ed was the Head of International Growth at Facebook, a company he joined after they acquired a startup. He co-founded it called Friendly, which had grown to 25 million users plus.

• 0:42Harry Stebbings?

  I'd also want to say a huge thank you to Will at Whoop. Some fantastic question suggestions today. Really did make the episode with Ed so special. But before we move into the episode today, if you're a founder or running a startup, I want to tell you about Brex. Brex combines high-limit credit cards, expense software and payments into one platform to help you scale smarter and faster. Go to brex.com/growthpodcast to get a corporate card with 10 to 20 times higher limits, great rewards and expense tracking, plus a business account with no transaction fees and there's no personal guarantee or credit check. Apply 100% online at brex.com/growthpodcast today and you'll get up to 50,000 rewards points.

• 1:21Harry Stebbings?

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• 2:05Harry Stebbings?

  Cooley works with more than 7,000 innovative, high-growth private company clients. To ensure that they are structured for growth and long term success. So to learn more about the number one most active law firm representing VC backed companies going public, head over to coolie.com and also cooliego.com. Coolie's award winning free legal resource for entrepreneurs. But it's time for the show and I'm so excited to hand over to the one and only Ed Baker.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 2:37Harry Stebbings?

  Ed, this is such a joy to for me to do. As I said, I heard so many great things from so many people before this episode, especially Will at Whoop. So thank you so much for joining me today.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me, Harry. It's really an honour to be on your show.

• 2:49Harry Stebbings?

  That is so kind of you, but I always love to start with a little bit of context. So tell me, when you think about how you made your way into the world of startups and how you came to lead some of the most powerful and fantastic growth organisations with the likes of Facebook and Uber. What did that entry into startups and growth look like for you? And can you provide that context?

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Sure. Well, for me, the story actually begins a little over 20 years ago. I'm dating myself now, but I built my first website back when I was in college. It was called datessite.com. And the way it worked, it was a crush site. So you'd put in email addresses of people you had a crush on. They'd get an email saying somebody likes you and they'd have to put in email addresses of people they had crushes on. And if you matched up, it would say you've got a match. I launched that on Valentine's Day of 1999 at Harvard and within one week, a quarter of all the students at Harvard had signed up for it. So for me, that was my first time, one, building a website, but two, seeing exponential growth on the internet. And I was studying physics at the time and was really intrigued by that exponential growth that just happened kind of on its own.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  I started kind of iterating on a growth model, coming up with a framework for this is how you measure a viral loop. This is how you calculate the K factor. If the K factor gets above one, you get exponential growth. And then fast forwarding a few years, when Facebook launched their app platform, I found that to be a great place to experiment with building viral apps. And I built several silly apps that all grew to millions of users just through this viral loop. And then I ended up starting a company right after going to Stanford Business School called Friendly, social question and answer site, but it was really just another. Dating side disguise, you ask people questions about themselves, answer questions about yourself. That grew to about twenty five million registered users, all through viral growth, no marketing spend.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Again, using those, kind of that same framework that I had started working on back in college. We then sold the company to Facebook. I ended up running the international growth team there. And at Facebook, I really learned what it's like to work on a larger growth team. And there were some pretty interesting lessons I learned there. I then left Facebook in twenty thirteen to join Uber, back when Uber was still a pretty small startup that a lot of people hadn't yet heard of, to start up their growth team. And over the next four years, I ran the growth team at Uber, also ended up running the product team my last year there. Before leaving, moving back to the East Coast with my wife and family. And these days, I invest in startups and advise startups on growth.

• 5:07Harry Stebbings?

  I do want to start, though. You mentioned, you know, the times at Facebook and Uber there. If we take them kind of chronologically, what would you say were the key lessons from your time at Facebook?

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Sure. I think my biggest takeaways from Facebook were, one, learning how to structure a growth team and focus on a North Star metric and align that whole team around growing that North Star metric. And then I think another one is the importance of internationalization. We did a lot of stuff at Facebook to grow in some of our more competitive international markets. That was an interesting takeaway. Happy to share examples there. And I'd say the third thing, which wasn't obvious to me before going to Facebook, but when I got there, we focused so much more on retention and engagement than acquisition. And basically, as you get bigger, those two metrics of retention and engagement actually become a lot more important to maintaining growth than new user acquisition.

• 5:58Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, I would absolutely, sorry, while I have the chance, I have to ask. In terms of the examples on the international growth and those markets expansion side, what are some examples that stand out to you?

• 6:07Speaker 02

  So one that comes to mind is actually in Japan. We were not as big as the local competitor in Japan at the time. I think they were called Mixi. And when we dug into the metrics in Japan, we noticed that most people were not inviting their friends. And when we compared the conversion rates in Japan versus in other parts of the world, there was a big drop off occurring in Japan on that invite step. And when we We dug into it and talked with our country manager in Japan and the team there. They said, you know, it's just a cultural thing. It's considered rude to invite people to a new thing like this. And that's why everyone's skipping that step. And so what we did, it was actually a fairly minor tweak. Instead of calling them invites, we called them announcements. And we said, now that you've signed up for Facebook, why don't you let Facebook announce to all of your friends

• 6:51Speaker 02

  that you're now on Facebook and this is where they find you? And suddenly, everyone started saying, sure, I'll let Facebook announce this to all of my friends. And just by changing the wording, it was more culturally accepted. And Japan went from one of our slowest growing countries to one of our fastest growing countries. Shortly after that, we surpassed our local competitor in Japan.

• 7:11Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, that is absolutely fascinating in terms of like the simple wording, changing all kind of cultural norms of acceptance. In terms of Uber, I mean, it's another just incredible story. What were some takeaways from the time there?

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Let's see, at Uber, first of all, I think one of the big takeaways for me was just the importance of focus, especially when you have limited resources. When I had a small team at Uber on day one, it was five people. I just realized how important it is to focus on the needle movers. Especially in with a two-sided marketplace. The other area that I, we learned we needed to focus on is focus on the side of the marketplace. That's the bottleneck. And then in our case at Uber, it tended to be the supply side. We needed to add more drivers in order to grow more so than riders. So kind of focusing on the big needle movers, rather than doing like hundreds of A B tests every week. You can, by just focusing on like the things that really will move the needle, that can make a big difference. Happy to give examples there now or later, if you'd like.

• 8:05Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, I feel terrible just keeping on asking for examples. But I'd love an example. I love the Japan on Facebook. So hit move on from Uber.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Okay, great. You know, as I mentioned, we were supply constrained at Uber. Here's an example of something we did. Again, it was actually a pretty simple thing that we built. It didn't take a lot of time, but it truly was a needle mover that resulted in a step change in growth. And that was when we added in the rider app, we just added a little button that said, want to make some money? Become a driver. And suddenly, we had this whole new source of drivers coming in from our rider base. Before we had that, most of our drivers came from paid marketing and we had a driver. A referral program and of course we had some just organic signups that we didn't have to pay for. But by adding that little button in the rider app that said become a driver. Suddenly we had as many new drivers signing up from that button as we did from all of our paid marketing efforts combined.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  That's an example of a needle mover and when I look back at my time at Uber. Every year we maybe had one or two things like that that accounted for more growth than everything else combined. You know, all the hundreds of other A B tests that we were doing, putting it all together and that didn't drive as much growth as one little thing like that.

• 9:12Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, when we think about focus prioritization and needle movers. How do you advise growth leaders and teams to determine needle movers versus nice to haves? And really constrain their thinking to the one or two things that do move the needle?

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a good question and I think the way to start, first of all, coming up with what is the North Star metric of this company? What is that one metric that we are trying to grow and setting goals for where you want that metric to be? By the end of the first half, by the end of the second half of the year.

• 9:42Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask as an example, sorry, for like Facebook and Uber, what would the North Star metric be? Because there could be so many, what would you say they were?

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Well, so at Facebook, when I was there, the North Star metric was monthly active users. So that was the metric that the entire growth team was looking at every single day. And every week we'd have a team meeting where we'd say, how much has MAU grown or not in the past week and why? And by having that North Star metric, we could then say to everyone on the team, if you're not working on something that's moving this metric in a positive way. You're probably not working on the most important thing. Similarly, at Uber, our North Star metric, in fact, one of the first things I did when I started the growth team at Uber was said to the team, we've got to come up with our North Star metric. We decided on, instead of something like monthly active riders, we said, well, it's a two sided marketplace. We need a metric that encapsulates both sides of the marketplace.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  So we did weekly trips because every trip requires a rider and a driver. And so that was the metric that we aligned the entire team around and said, this is the metric we need to move. Back to your original question, the nice to haves versus the needle movers. I think one of the most important things. Of any product leader or growth leader is prioritization. And it becomes a lot easier to prioritize things when you can ask the question, how much is this likely to move our North Star metric? A lot of times you don't, obviously don't know the exact answer, but you can make some assumptions and say, well, if we make this tweak and it increases the conversion rate by this much, then our North Star metric will increase by this much. Therefore, that's a pretty big one. Whereas this one, even if it works out great, it's only going to move things this much.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Even though it's a nice to have, you know, it's not going to move the needle as much. So let's not spend resources on that thing.

• 11:21Harry Stebbings?

  No, it's fascinating in terms of the weekly trips with Uber. Cause I was thinking it through and I was like, everything's just one sided. If it's like driver acquisition or demand side, so great in terms of the weekly trips. He was mentioning the word growth a lot. Obviously this show is focused on growth and we both hear the term thrown around so much. I'd love to start with actually kind of how you think about it. And like, how do you define growth and like head of growth today?

• 11:44Speaker 02

  I think at a high level, it comes back to what I was just talking about, which is moving that North Star metric. So I think of growth as a cross-functional team effort to move the metric that ultimately drives the growth of the business. And usually that North Star metric is correlated with revenue. So ultimately it's driving more revenue for the business. The reason I don't use revenue though, as a North Star metric, is I think it's helpful to have something that's a bit more tangible, like how many trips are happening every week? Or how many users are on Facebook every month? I think of growth as just like, whatever you have to do to grow that number faster, falls under growth and that can include marketing, that can include product. In fact, a lot of times it is product driven changes.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  That tends to be what I like to focus on the most. At Uber, we found that there's also an operations component to growth. You know, actually onboarding all of these drivers, there's that in-person component to it with all the teams on the ground who are inspecting vehicles and making sure drivers pass background checks and all that stuff. So there's also that operations component to growth. So it's really a cross-functional thing. It's not just marketing or not just product, you know, it's, it's everything combined.

• 12:53Harry Stebbings?

  When we think about kind of the cross-functional discipline of growth, how do you think about when's the right time for founding teams to? Start thinking about instilling this cross-functional disciplinary team. How do you advise founders today on the right time?

• 13:06Speaker 02

  I think one mistake startups sometimes make, and I've made this mistake myself as well, trying to focus on growth too early. I think you want to find product market fit before you start to work on growth. Sometimes startups will say, oh, we need to hire a growth leader in order to find product market fit. But I actually think they're two different things. So to me, product market fit is just building a product that people love to use. I think that's actually the hardest thing for any entrepreneur to do is to find that product market fit. I think there's often a lot of luck involved with that. An analogy I like to use is like drilling for oil. No matter how good your drill is, if you're drilling in the wrong place, you'll never hit it. I feel like every entrepreneur that's building their startup, they're building their drill and they're drilling somewhere, but they might be drilling in the wrong place.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  You don't want to start growing if you're drilling in the wrong place. You want to make sure you've hit that oil first, then you add the growth expertise. So I'd say the right time to build out that growth team is once you really feel like, all right, we're on to something big, we've got the product market fit, people that are using this love it. Now we just need to add some fuel to the fire to make it grow faster. And that's actually why I decided to go to both Facebook and Uber, was I felt like those companies clearly had found product market fit. They had built products that their users love. I remember, you know, with Uber, my first Uber trip. And a lot of people can probably also talk about their first Uber trip. It was a magical experience. And when I talked with the drivers, they said, this is amazing. I can now make money in a flexible way.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  I'm making more than I've ever made before. So for them, it was magical as well. To me, that's the product market fit. And then I wanted to go help Uber grow that thing that worked.

• 14:43Harry Stebbings?

  So when we think about kind of instilling this discipline in this team, which has achieved product market fit, how do we think about, as you said, like, if you joined Uber to kind of start and structure that growth team, how should we think about the first steps in terms of structuring? Do you structure with a growth leader first? Do you structure with kind of growth reps, product managers? How do you think about the first steps to structuring that growth team?

• 15:06Speaker 02

  I look at both Facebook and Uber as examples, just because I was on. Both of those teams and I I think those companies have done quite well and in both of those cases, they had separate growth teams where the growth leader reported directly to the CEO and these teams were structured cross-functionally. A lot of the reason Uber was this way is I basically took everything I learned from Facebook and built the Uber growth team in this way. But when I say cross-functional, there were basically five key functions on the growth team. Product, design, engineering, marketing and data science or analytics. I think the five critical functional teams. When I started the team at Uber, I only had five people on my team on day one. So I said, all right, Mike, you're going to run product. You know, Curtis, you're going to run engineering and so on.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  We we found someone to run design, to run marketing and to run analytics. And that was the initial team. And some of these people, you know, the first woman who ran our growth marketing team, she had never done marketing before. But because it was at such an early stage, we just had these passionate people that were eager to learn and just dove in and did it.

• 16:10Harry Stebbings?

  We're going to get into the scaling process around hiring those teams. But I I am too intrigued, you know, when you say about kind of, you know, starting and structuring that growth team at Uber. What was some of the biggest challenges for you in terms of structuring and growing that growth team at Uber? I'm too interested.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  You know, I think one of the challenges that remained a challenge throughout the entire time I was at Uber and I'd say it probably became a bigger challenge over time rather than a smaller one is that we had a growth team and a product team that, you know, were kind of both operating next to each other. And in the early days, maybe it actually didn't create as much friction because there was just so much stuff to work on that it was easy for the growth team to say, all right, we'll work on this stuff and the product teams that will work on this stuff. But as both teams grew and grew to hundreds of people on each team, there started to be more points of overlap where we'd have sub-teams working on similar things. And I think anytime you have areas of overlap in any business that can create some friction

• 17:08Speaker 02

  and I think that's also when politics and that kind of stuff appears. I'd say that was one of the challenges of having both a growth team and a product team. And back to your earlier question, like, there's no one right way to do it. I don't. Think you necessarily need a separate growth team and a separate product team. And I've seen companies that sometimes build the growth team within product. I've also seen an example of a company. I remember one of the founders of Booking.com said to me, what's the point of a product team? We only had a growth team and the growth team did product, but we didn't need a product team. There are different ways to talk about it. And ultimately, it does largely depend on the leaders you have in terms of how you structure things.

• 17:43Harry Stebbings?

  I do want to kind of put on a bit of a hypothetical hat though, Ed, because you're obviously an ambassador today. So I want to pretend like you're the investor and I'm the founder of this company, you know, company X. And we've decided that I need to build out a growth team and I've never done it before. I'm very young. I have no idea what great looks like in terms of growth or product minds. I just need your help here. And so when we think about the first steps, how should I literally structure the process of hiring a head of growth? And for me to map out, what should those stages look like?

• 18:14Speaker 02

  Got it. I think the first step is to decide on where do you want growth to live within the organization? I can share examples with you of companies I've invested in, for example, that have decided growth should live within product. In that case, you know, the company I'm working with right now, Whoop, that's where growth lives within Whoop right now. And we actually had someone on the team is a product manager, but he was very analytical and was actually working on a lot of growth related stuff. He's now driving a lot of the growth efforts within Whoop underneath the product team. That's one way to do it. If you have someone on your team already, who is really more of like a very like quantitative and analytical, ideally all product managers.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  But if you have someone who's like especially good at that kind of stuff, maybe that could be your growth leader. I'd say alternatively, another way to do it is to say, you know what? We're going to go out and hire someone externally, someone who has a lot of growth expertise already, who's ideally done this at another company like a Facebook, for example, or an Uber. We're going to bring them in and ask them to start up the growth team. You know, and that's what the CEO at Uber did with me when he brought me over from Facebook to Uber. He just said, all right, Ed, start our growth team. Go. So I think either way can work, but I, I think if you're going to hire someone externally to start up a new growth team within the company, it's really important, I think, that that person has had experience on a growth team at one of these leading companies.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  So they know what they're doing. Whereas if it's someone who doesn't have that experience, it's probably better for them to live within an existing organization and kind of build a team from within.

• 19:47Harry Stebbings?

  Let's say we take route number two, okay? So you're the board member for this hypothetical company and we're going, okay, we need that head of growth. We're going for someone from existing growth team within a great company. Me and you both know that especially with large growth teams, there are some A stars and there are some E players like there is in every team.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 20:06Harry Stebbings?

  If we're looking at signs and signals that like highlight the best of the best, what would you say are the signs and signals and tests that you would do in those early stages to discover that talent?

• 20:17Speaker 02

  So I think the first thing I would look for in any growth leader, it has to be someone who has both the art and the science. So by that, I mean they're very analytical, but they're also very creative. I think growth is something where you just, you have to be able to combine those two things. And especially in the, the leader of the growth team, it has to be someone who can kind of use both sides of the brain to do that. Of course, as they build out their team, there may be people on the team that are more creative or more analytical. But I think the leader should really be strong in both of those areas. So at a high level, that's one of the first things I'd look for. In order to figure out, does this person have, have that art and science kind of combination? I think one of the questions I like to ask is to have them tell me about some of the growth experiments they've done in the past

• 21:02Speaker 02

  that have either worked or that haven't worked. Sometimes I'll say, tell me about an A B test you did that surprised you, that was an even bigger needle mover than you thought it would be. Or on the flip side, tell me about an A B test you've run that you thought was going to be a huge needle mover, but it, it actually didn't move the needle. To just have them talk about some of the growth experiments they've done in the past can be one good way to just understand, okay, what have they actually done? That's the end of the day, you want someone who's going to move the needle. Ask them how have they moved the needle in the past? That's one of the first things I do. Another way to do that, and I like to do. This as well is is to then ask them some sort of challenge problem to solve ideally related to your own business.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  So when Travis, the CEO of Uber was interviewing me, he actually gave me a challenge problem about Uber promo cards. And he just said, we have these promo cards. We haven't really figured out exactly how we're going to use these yet. Tell me how you would make these promo cards work and what would you do to turn this into a big source of new riders? And it was just a pretty open ended question. He gave me the question a few days before I came in to present my answer to him and some other people on the team. I put a few slides together and started talking about all of the different things I would do to make that work. And here are some of the different things I would A B test and, you know, everything from the design of the promo card itself to the landing page and make sure it's mobile optimized.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  You know, and all of that kind of, you're just talking through everything I would do and everything I would measure to figure out how to turn that into a needle mover.

• 22:30Harry Stebbings?

  So it's interesting. I've spoken to quite a few young founders in particular recently about this and challenge problems. And they say, Harry, I've got Ed Baker. I mean, he was at Uber and Facebook running growth teams. I can't ask him to do a challenge problem. I mean, he'll react so adversely. How would you respond to founders who worry about giving challenge problems to people who have run very significant organizations? And they feel almost that they have to impress them so much and sell so hard. How would you advise them in that situation?

• 22:59Speaker 02

  I mean, if this is someone who's going to be working with you, you only want to hire someone who's willing to do that work. You've got to like, feel like both of you are in on this thing and both of you are willing to put the time in on it. So I don't know if that's a good answer, but I'd say like, don't be afraid to ask people to do some work. Sometimes you might need to get them excited about the position before you say, hey, come in and answer this challenge problem. So you might have to do a little bit of selling beforehand to get them excited about it. But if they're a true growth leader, they'll probably be excited to answer the challenge problem, you know? And I think if someone doesn't want to do that, that's potentially a red flag.

• 23:33Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, you mentioned North Star metrics earlier. Do I, as the founder of this hypothetical company, do I need to have a very clearly defined package of what I'm trying to hire you at for? Or do I, am I able to say, I don't actually know what this North Star metric is. I don't actually know how we're going to structure growth within the organization, but that's what I'm hiring you for. Or does it need to be more packaged like a traditional role might be?

• 23:58Speaker 02

  I think the more senior the leader is that you're recruiting, the less defined the role needs to be. So if you're bringing someone in and saying, look, I need you to to basically figure out growth. Come in here, you figure out our North Star metric, you figure out how to structure the team. And if you've hired someone who has the experience to do that, that's great. And a lot of the more experienced people want to be able to come up with that. They don't want to be told, here's how you need to structure your team and here's the metric you need to grow. You know, maybe someone who doesn't have as much experience would like that guidance. But I think the more experienced leaders, they want to do that on their own. I think, as I mentioned to you, first week I was at Uber, it was all about, let's figure out what our North Star metric should be. And I was glad I was able to figure that out with my team rather than being told this is what it is.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  So I think it's perfectly okay not to have all of those answers before you hire that growth leader. You just need to make sure you hire, that's why we talked about path one and path two. If you go down path two, just make sure you hire someone who does have that experience. So that you can trust them to know the right way to do this stuff.

• 24:57Harry Stebbings?

  We mentioned red flags in terms of them maybe not being willing to do the challenge problem. Are there any other red flags that would surface in a process like this to you? That you'd advise me as the founder to be wary of, watch out for, and just, you know, acknowledge?

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Sure, I think another thing I think is very important to try to figure out in that interview process is, what is this person like as a manager and as a leader? You know, if they're very good at growth on their own, you know, maybe they do have like the creative side and the analytical side. And they can come up with exciting things to A B test and move the needle. But they don't know how to manage people, that would be a red flat. And there are kind of two ways I try to figure out how good of a people manager is this person. One is I just do reference checks. But another question I like to ask, I ask them about the last job they were at. What were some of their strengths and some of their weaknesses? Usually frame that question as, could you tell me about the last time you got a performance review? You know, what were some of the strengths?

• 25:54Speaker 02

  That you were told you have and were some of the areas that you need to work on that you were told you have. And ideally, you ask them that question framed as both like feedback from your manager as well as upward feedback from the people that have been on your teams. Not all companies do that that three sixty feedback, but even if they don't, I'll say, well, if I were to ask one of your direct reports, what are your strengths and what are your weaknesses? What do you think they would tell me? I think by framing it that way, rather than just saying, tell me about your strengths and weaknesses. I like to frame it as if I were to ask one of your reports or if I were to ask your manager, what would they say? And I think it's sometimes you might get a slightly different answer if you ask, if you frame the question in that way.

• 26:31Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, no, I agree. Actually, it reminds me, I had an incredible CEO on the show the other day and they said, actually, people generally won't ever admit to their weaknesses. And so one way to do it is you ask them, if you were to hire someone to support you, what qualities would they have? And then it generally will indicate to where you're shit, to be quite frank.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  That's right. That's interesting. I like that.

• 26:51Harry Stebbings?

  It's a good way to do it, I found. So if we now have this candidate and we've absolutely decided, fantastic, they're going to start onboarding. Ed, you're my advisor on this. I'm the founder and I'm going, ah, I don't know how to onboard a head of growth. What does the optimal onboarding process look like in your mind? And if we think about, if we think about you joining this hypothetical company, which has just grown to two people now, well done. What would that ideal first week, first month look like for you in the onboarding?

• 27:18Speaker 02

  So when I think back to my onboarding experience at Uber, for example, there wasn't much to it. I was basically told by our CEO, who was my manager, here are five people for you to start the growth team with, go. And that was my onboarding. And then the good news was that those five people on my team had been at the company. And I actually had a lot of help from those people on my team to get on boarded. One of them in particular, really, he basically on boarded me and took me through all the dashboards they had, all the, how everything worked, drew up an org chart and went through how the company was currently structured. It's funny because we didn't actually have a formal org chart at the time and, and a lot of the reporting lines, no one even knew like who reported to who.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  But we at least had some sense of, of how things were structured. So I guess that's. A long way of saying, I don't think you necessarily have to have an amazing onboarding setup for this new head of growth that you're hiring. And again, if it's an experienced person, they'll be able to figure out a lot of it on their own. But I do think one of the most important things is to at least think about, well, who can be on their team on day one? I think that's probably one of the most important things is like, think about who are the initial people that can be on that growth team with this new leader? Ideally, having some people on that team who have been at the company for a while, who can really help them understand how the company works.

• 28:39Harry Stebbings?

  And for me then, as a CEO, if we've thrown you in the deep end and you know, you have the five people and they're great, they're helping you onboard with all the traditional elements. Me and you have a like check in at the end of the month. What should I as a CEO expect or be really happy about that you've stabilized the foundations on, you've gained knowledge on in the first month? When you think back to your times with, say, Uber, what did you want to achieve in that first month and really understand with clarity?

• 29:04Speaker 02

  Let's figure out what our North Star metric is, where are we today and where do we want to be in the future? One of the first things that needs to happen for any growth leader is to just figure out what is the goal? Once you figure out, okay, this is our goal, then the next step is what are some of the things we're going to do to get there? So within that first month, you probably haven't yet found a needle mover, maybe you have if you've been lucky, but usually things take a bit longer than that. But to at least have a plan in terms of, okay, this is our North Star metric, this is where we are today. This is where we want to be by the end of the year, or maybe you don't even have by the end of the year, this is where we want to be within the next six months. And then say, and here are some of the bigger swings we want to take to try to find step changes to get there.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  And then I'd say if the next step from there is saying, and here's what I need from you, the CEO, to help me get there. I'd say it's almost a red flag if the the person you've just hired is not asking you for help as founder or CEO. You want someone who's going to come in and say, all right, I've figured out where I want to be. And how I'm going to get there, but here are the things I need from you to help me get there.

• 30:07Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, it's so interesting you say that in terms of that communication pathway, because that was going to be a big one for me, which is like, what does the optimal relationship look like between the CEO and this head of growth? Maybe when you think back to yours with Travis or others for, what is that optimal relationship?

• 30:20Speaker 02

  I think it's important for the CEO to have one on ones with all of his or her direct reports frequently, at least weekly. So I think growth is largely about removing barriers. That relationship with the CEO should largely be about the CEO removing barriers for his or her direct reports. So that's how I often thought about my relationship with Travis at Uber, for example, was I would come to him when there were problems I needed his help solving, but if it was a problem I could solve on my own, then I would solve it on my own. So I basically come to him when I needed his help. He also tended to get in the weeds more than other CEOs I've worked with, which in the early days was was awesome.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  I'd say as as we got bigger, there were so many things, the company got so big, I think it wasn't as scalable for him to be getting in the weeds on everything everyone was working on at the company. It's like no human being can do that when you have a thousand person or 10,000 person company. But Travis did have the ability to really go deep into the weeds on any given thing. And so we would have growth team meetings with him every Friday morning. We'd usually pull all nighters every Thursday night, preparing for our meeting with him on Friday morning. And for the longest time, the entire growth team was invited to that meeting. I remember talking with Travis early on, saying, I'm trying to figure out who I should include in these meetings. I'd love to have as many people as possible. And he said, invite everyone, have everyone in the room. And we basically did that until we couldn't fit everyone in the room.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  And we've ultimately had to like start to limit attendance just because of the space of the room. But we had, I remember some of our weekly meetings where we would just have people standing all around the room. And it was great because we would share with Travis, this is stuff that we've accomplished in the past week. Here are some things we're working on. And he would always have some really creative ideas himself. And like I said, would get into the weeds with us. It was just this nice weekly cadence of here's what we've done, here's what we're going to do. We'd always get. Some interesting feedback from him in those meetings.

• 32:16Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think that intensity that he brought made you and that granular involvement that he brought that maybe other CEOs don't? Did that make you better as a growth team or the same or worse?

• 32:27Speaker 02

  I think it made us better, you know, because he was so passionate about it that rubbed off on everyone else, myself, who did. And he cared so much, I think it made everyone else care even more. People saw the things they had worked on that past week. We'd present something to him on that Friday and he'd dig in and be talking to the person who had worked on that and just. He didn't care, like, is this someone who just joined the company last week that was their first job out of college? Like, he would just, like, engage with them and get into the weeds with them, and that was awesome. And I think it just made people see the work I'm doing, it really matters. I think that's a great way for a CEO to be. Like I said, as the company gets bigger, I think it's not possible to do that.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Once a company gets too big, unfortunately, but I think for smaller companies, that's the way it should be.

• 33:15Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, absolutely a challenge with scale. I mean, that relationship's a challenge with scale to have that intensity and inclusion. The other one that you touched on earlier is the relationship between product and growth that becomes more frictionful with scale. How do you think about creating seamless lines of communication with product teams? And trying to remove as much friction as possible. Is there anything that can be done to remove those barriers?

• 33:38Speaker 02

  I think the most important thing to do when you have a growth team and a product team. Over-communication between the the head of product and the head of growth. At Uber, I sat right next to Jeff Holden, our chief product officer, and we would try to communicate as frequently as possible about things. And that the times we ran into bumps along the road were probably times that we just hadn't communicated well. And it's not just just the two leaders communicating, but you really want the teams communicating too. I think setting up just regular weekly meetings where you get all the the product leaders and growth leaders in a room. Discuss, here's what we've been working on this past week and here's what we're going to be working on going forward over the next week. Figuring out, are there potential areas of overlap we need to be able to discuss? Then there's also kind of the more.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  Formal roadmap planning that we would do every six months where we would spend more time trying to make sure that we had just said, okay, here's the stuff products going to work on. Here's the stuff growth will work on. So you kind of draw those two circles and ideally you don't have overlap there. But even if you draw those ahead of time and it looks like there won't be overlap, inevitably there will be some areas of overlap. And that's where just the frequent communication, I think, can make a big difference.

• 34:49Harry Stebbings?

  One that I think to the whole time, which is like, when you think about kind of the continuous iteration, the continuous A B testing, how do you think about retrospectives and postmortems? How often they should be done? And then this crucially, which I just never know the answer, how long should you give an experiment to really get enough data to see if it's working?

• 35:08Speaker 02

  One nice thing about a needle mover, it actually takes very little data to see that this is a needle mover. You need more data for the smaller improvements, maybe changing the color of this button. And you want to see, does that improve conversion by a fraction of a percent? And then maybe you need to let the test be running for weeks before you get enough data points. But I personally think that's kind of a waste of time. When there are other experiments you could be running right away, see, wow, this doubled conversion rate. Another thing we did at Uber that was a needle mover, I shared the rider to driver thing. But on the rider side, we found that in India, in particular, a lot of people don't have credit cards. Uber, since day one, had been an app that required you to put in your credit card before you could use it.

• 35:53Speaker 02

  Makes sense. And that's part of what made Uber so magical is that you never had to get out your wallet and pay for a ride in cash. However, our team in India was saying, hey, there's so many people in this country that can't use Uber because they don't have credit cards. And even people that do have credit cards often don't like to use it because there's this two factor authentication thing that's required here. And it actually adds more friction. It doesn't remove friction. We decided to run a test in Hyderabad, India, where we said, let's let riders request their first ride without putting a credit card number in. In fact, we were told by our CEO not to run that test because he felt so strongly against it. But we had so much conviction it would make a big difference that we secretly ran the test. Just as a small experiment.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  And when we got the data back, it had doubled conversion rate to paid first trip. So when we saw that it was a two X improvement, we decided this is something we need to do. And then when we shared that data with Travis, he said, I hate you guys, but I love you guys. This is amazing. And we've rolled that out in a lot of other, other countries as well. But it was, you know, removing that barrier of entering the credit card number and allowing riders to pay in cash allowed so many more people to get through the funnel.

• 37:01Harry Stebbings?

  I love that story. I would not have liked to have the guys say that to Travis and say, hey, we disobeyed you, but here's the data.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Right. But to his credit, he said, I'm glad you did, you know? He let the data win the argument in that case.

• 37:12Harry Stebbings?

  I do want to ask though, because you know, you mentioned kind of not having the data there, but making that decision, you know, against the CEO's prior advice. I asked actually Twitter, what would they most like to hear in terms of questions? And one that I really liked was talk about a growth decision that you made without data to back it up and how did it go?

• 37:31Speaker 02

  I think pretty much every A B test that we run, we run the A B test because we don't have the data. In terms of growth decisions being made without data, every test we do is a decision that's being made. I like to do tests that don't take a lot of time. I try to prioritize things that are simple to build and then looking for things that will have big results.

• 37:53Harry Stebbings?

  My question on the data side is say it comes back and we've been working on this project for three to four weeks, say, and we look at the North Star metric. It hasn't gone up into the right and it's actually flat or it's down. How do you think as a growth leader about maintaining morale and excitement within a team when the North Star metric isn't moving in the way that you want it to?

• 38:14Speaker 02

  So how do we maintain morale if, if we're doing experiments that aren't moving the metric? I try to remind people that most of the experiments we do are not going to move the needle and that's okay. We learn something from every single experiment we do, even the ones that either don't move the needle or that actually result in worse outcomes. The thing I like to do is ask ourselves, well, why? Why didn't that work? Or why don't we think that worked? And as long as we're learning, it's okay if we do a lot of experiments that don't help us grow because we then will be even Smarter about the next experiments that we run. So much of growth is about testing things and failing and testing again and failing. Called it the champion's mindset at Uber and that was one of our cultural values.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  The video that we showed as an example of what is meant by this cultural value was someone running in a track meet. Can't remember which race this was, but they fell down on the track, tripped on something. Everyone else kind of ran ahead, but they got back up and they caught up with the pack and passed them at the end and won the race. And the point is it's okay if you get knocked down. It's okay if things don't work, but get back up and keep going. So I think that's an important cultural value, I think, for any startup to have. You're going to get knocked down over and over again and things aren't going to work. But it's okay, as long as you keep going, that's how you ultimately win.

• 39:29Harry Stebbings?

  In terms of that cultural value, as the kind of leader of the growth team, that is partly your role to instill. And I do want to touch on kind of the management aspect of being that growth leader. Because, you know, as we said, starting Uber's growth team and then both at Facebook and Uber where it scaled quite incredibly. How do you think your management style changed managing smaller versus much larger growth teams?

• 39:50Speaker 02

  So I think in the early days, when our growth team was only five people, I was very much in the weeds myself and I was running product experiments myself and really like deeply in the weeds. When our team got bigger, by the time I left Uber, the growth team was over 500 people. My role became much more one of managing people who were managing people who were managing people. I still like to get into the weeds, but I just wasn't able to do it nearly as much when I had that larger team. For me, that was one of the biggest differences between having a small team versus having a larger team was just my role became much more about helping other people become growth leaders themselves as opposed to doing the work myself.

• 40:33Harry Stebbings?

  I do have to ask, because you mentioned about helping others become growth leaders. You know, obviously now you invest in companies and I heard just the best things from, you know, Will at Whoop in particular. When you think about investing today, how's investing changed your mindset to growth and your attitude to growth?

• 40:49Speaker 02

  So when I look for companies to invest in, actually use a lot of the things I've learned. From growth to pick companies I want to invest in. And by that, I mean, one of the first things I look for is, does this company have product market fit? We talked about that at the beginning of this podcast. I think that's one of the most important questions to ask. And if the answer is yes, that's much more important to me than is this company already growing really fast? And maybe part of that's that I feel like, well, I can maybe help them with the growth part. If they have product market fit, then, you know, the growth will come more easily. But I take that that's one thing I look at when I invest in companies.

• 41:25Harry Stebbings?

  How much of a role does K factor play in your product market fit assessment? And how do you think about analyzing K factors today?

• 41:32Speaker 02

  I think very few products have K factors above one these days. It's just a lot harder to get things to go viral these days. I don't pay too much attention to K factors these days. I do think that if you have even a K factor below one, it can make a significant difference in things like CAC and LTV and the unit economics of a business. Because even with a K factor of something like point five, you're basically able to acquire twice as many customers for the same marketing cost. I do think that kind of stuff matters. I feel like K factor is something that can be optimized over time and is not the first thing I look for in a company I'm considering investing in.

• 42:09Harry Stebbings?

  I have to ask, given that your experiences, you are the best person to answer this. I don't know if you read Sarah Tavell's piece the other day on the danger of hype. And she said, you know, when you think about ride sharing models, you have economic subsidies. You can discount rides and it will obviously increase demand. The trouble with hype subsidies is the supplier has no control over the subsidy. They can't remove it, they can't increase it. Hype once started is a rule under itself. Clubhouse is a great example of this. How do you think about that and the control on the economic subsidy versus the lack of control on the hype subsidy?

• 42:45Speaker 02

  I hadn't really thought much about this hype subsidy, but I think that's a great point. Is it something you can't control? I don't think that means you shouldn't ride that wave if you can get it. But I think of it the same way I think of organic growth, which is just kind of, I mean, they're similar things, hype or just word of mouth organic growth. It's not something that you can Measure, but I look at it as icing on the cake. It's still a great thing to have, but I like to focus on the things I can measure. You know, when I'm calculating the K factor, for example, I'm not calculating how many people are telling their friends about it in person. But again, that's icing on the cake that just makes things grow even faster. So I measure the things I can measure. I still try to get that, you know, up to that magic point of going above one to get that exponential tipping point.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  But what I find is if you also have the hype and the word of mouth stuff, you might actually hit that tipping point before your calculated K factor even gets to one. You know, your calculated K factor might be at point eight or even point five, but the hype and word of mouth actually gets you over that tipping point sooner.

• 43:47Harry Stebbings?

  Got you. No, I totally agree with you in terms of being kind of that icing and cherry on the cake. I do want to move into my favorite, though, which is the quickfire round ad. So I say a short statement and then you give me your immediate thoughts, about sixty seconds or less. Does that sound okay?

• 43:59Speaker 02

  Sure, let's do it.

• 44:00Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, so what growth tactics have not changed over the last five years, but of course?

• 44:05Speaker 02

  The basic framework of virality is the same today as it was even twenty years ago when I first started working on it. In terms of how you calculate your K factor and how you draw out the viral loop. The framework is the same, but the channels themselves have changed.

• 44:20Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, well, that might be leading into the next one. What have died to death?

• 44:25Speaker 02

  Several of the channels have died to death. And by that, I mean, you know, the first thing I built that went viral was that email-based crush site. That would never go viral today because, well, first of all, if people get an email saying someone has a crush on you, they're probably not going to click on the link. These days, I don't think you get as many clicks on random links like that as you might have in the past. And secondly, spam filters oftentimes not even put it in your inbox. Versus back in nineteen ninety-nine, people didn't have spam filters. People read every email they received. And so that's an example of one channel that used to work a lot better than it did now. There are other examples like Facebook viral channels that used to be super viral ten years ago, but don't really work today.

• 45:05Harry Stebbings?

  What would you say is the biggest mistake founders make when hiring for growth teams?

• 45:09Speaker 02

  I think the biggest mistake founders make is hiring for growth teams at the wrong time. We briefly touched on this earlier, but you don't want to grow too early in the company's life cycle. You want to make sure you have product market fit first. And it can actually be a negative thing to try to grow before you have product market fit.

• 45:27Harry Stebbings?

  Switching hats, I'm a emerging growth leader, you are the OG of growth leaders. What advice would you have for me as a growth leader emerging today, wanting to blossom into the role as head of growth?

• 45:38Speaker 02

  Focus, focus, focus. What are those big things you can do to move the needle? You don't need to do hundreds or thousands of experiments. A lot of times, if you just step back and ask yourself, how can I remove the biggest barriers that my customers are running into today? And just figure out one, two or three big barriers to remove. It's as simple as that. You don't have to do hundreds and hundreds of experiments.

• 46:03Harry Stebbings?

  What would you most like to change about the world of growth today?

• 46:06Speaker 02

  I think growth has become almost too quantitative and analytical. And when people talk about growth hacking, they're almost like focused too much on the metrics. For me, the most exciting part is the creative side of growth. Coming up with super creative ways to grow in new ways. Almost like taking a minute to just not even look at the data. And I know that that sounds counterintuitive, but the most successful things I've done that have really moved the needle on growth are things where I almost didn't even need to measure them because you implement a new feature and you suddenly see it's growing a lot faster. So it doesn't even really matter what the numbers say because you just know, wow, this made such a big difference, it works.

• 46:46Harry Stebbings?

  Final one for you, and I'm really intrigued on this one. Which one company, other than Facebook or Uber, in terms of growth strategy, have you been most impressed by recently?

• 46:55Speaker 02

  I know I'm biased when I say this because I'm an investor and I'm on the board, but I've been really impressed with what Whoop has been doing related to growth.

• 47:04Harry Stebbings?

  Why?

• 47:05Speaker 02

  Well, it really starts with when I first got involved with Whoop. One of the first things their founder, Will, and I talked about was a potential pricing change. I just kind of casually suggested an idea and the next week Will said, we tested that, we have the results, it moved the needle and we've implemented it. And that was one week later. And I've, I've had so many conversations like that with other founders. Maybe the idea never gets tested, or if it does, it takes months. And just the fact that even back then was able to execute so quickly on something like that, and they're doing that kind of stuff even more so today, that's really impressed me. I think a lot of it is about execution and hustle and just the ability to, to move really quickly.

• 47:47Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, I totally agree with you in terms of that operational velocity and I love that in terms of Will moving in a week. And this has been such a joy for me to do, so thank you so much for joining me and it's been so much fun.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  Thank you, Harry. I've really enjoyed this. Thanks so much for having me.

• 48:02Harry Stebbings?

  It's funny, I always say the best shows are a combination of anecdote, the story, the context, combined with theory, the lessons learned and tangible takeaways. That was such a great example of combining the two there with Ed. Huge thank you to Ed for being so fantastic. If you'd like to see more from us behind the scenes, of course you can on twenty minute vc.com. I always love to see you there. But before we leave you today. If you're a founder or running a startup, I want to tell you about Brex. Brex combines high limit credit cards, expense software and payments into one platform to help you scale smarter and faster. Go to brex.com forward slash growth podcast to get a corporate card with 10 to 20 times higher limits, great rewards and expense tracking, plus a business account with no transaction fees and there's no personal guarantee or credit check.

• 48:47Harry Stebbings?

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• 49:32Harry Stebbings?

  The firm has been devoted to entrepreneurs and investors partnering with both to transform breakthrough ideas into successful companies. Cooley works with more than 7,000 innovative, high-growth private company clients to ensure that they are structured for growth and long-term success. So to learn more about the number one most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public, head over to Cooley.com and also Cooleygo.com. Cooley's an award-winning free legal resource for entrepreneurs. As always, I so appreciate all your support and I cannot wait to bring you a fantastic episode with Sahil Bloom this coming Friday.