What is growth? 🔥 📈 💰
Nowadays, everything in business seems to be about growth.
“We need to grow our user base”, “We need to find a growth product manager”, “We need to have growth teams”, “We need a growth mindset” and, my favourite one, “We need to hire a growth hacker”.
Growth, growth and, again, growth.
Everyone talks about growth. But within my team at Airhelp we could not find a common definition of this term. And, talking with other people in the startup industry, I have realised we were not the only ones.
We all agreed that there was something related to a significant increase in a core business metric, like revenues or user base. And that there was something else connected to the iterative approach in doing the above.
We agreed that there was a “What” of growth and that there was a “How” of growth. And that they were complementary.
But we could not really find a satisfying definition.
So I have decided to conduct some researches and to put together the two definitions that satisfy me the most.
The “What” of growth.
The “What” of growth is defined by Casey Winters (CPO at Eventbrite, former Growth Lead at Pinterest/Grubhub):
“Growth is connecting more people to the existing value of a product”
Growth is about exposing a product to a new wave of adopters, via new channels, new partnerships, new features, and the likes. It is about acquisition, retention and monetization, on scale and post product-market fit.
The “How” of growth.
The “How” of growth is defined by Steven Dupree (former VP of Markteting at SoFi and at LogMeIn):
Growth implies an experimental and data-driven approach to decision-making. Implies blending quantitative insights with qualitative information. And systematically devoting to many small bets before committing to a few big ones.
Growth = What + How.
I can now say that growth has two, complementary and inseparable components:
- The What: Growth is linking more people to the value of a product
- The How: Growth is an experimental and data-driven approach to making decisions
This definition now makes it easier for me to understand what growth is and is not, and to focus my attention on what matters. For the sake of growth ;)
And I hope is going to help you as well.
Have a good journey,
— Livio
15/09/2019
