Over the past few years, I've learned a lot as a product operator and data scientist on several growth teams. Along the way, I've collected a bunch of resources that helped solidify my understanding of different concepts. These are the areas, readings, and talks that I recommend most:

Note: I've used emojis to signify the type of content I'm linking to. I've also included stars next to my personal favorites, if you only have time for the best of the best.

Understanding Growth

My favorite definition of growth is: "Finance owns the flow of cash in and out of a company. Growth owns the flow of customers in and out of a product." Growth looks different in each organization because each product grows in different ways. Growth is just a group of people focused on moving your user-focused north star metric.

Growth Strategy

Strategy is always kind of a fuzzy thing to deal with in practice. When I think of growth strategy, I think primarily about answering the question of "How does our product grow?" and then translating the answer of that question into actionable next steps.

Growth Teams

Once you hit a certain scale, you will have plenty of people working on growth at the same time. As is the case with other domains, it's an ongoing challenge to figure out how best to align contributors around your common goals.

Acquisition

Moving on the the funnel itself, growth starts with acquisition. Generally speaking, this falls more under the marketing umbrella than product, but especially early on in a startup's journey, these goals will be closely intertwined. If you can't acquire any users, everything else beyond that is a non-starter.

Building Product

Once a user shows up in your product, how can you best serve their needs to achieve goals related to satisfaction, retention, and additional acquisition loops? Building great product is larger than growth alone, but think of this section as an introduction to approaching product with a growth mindset. Besides, all product leaders worth their salt should be thinking about 'growth' to some extent, regardless of where they sit in the organization.

Monetization

Most of the time, your product should be making money somehow. That's where monetization comes in. The rabbit hole is much deeper than what I've included below. The important thing is that you understand why pricing matters, competitive strategy, and most importantly, how to talk to your users in order to effectively set your pricing.

Metrics & Experimentation

Last but not least is data, a foundational piece of product growth work. When your team's primary goal is to lift metrics, results matter. Sound decision making is hard enough with good data, and without it you mine as well toss a coin. Growth done right means running well-thought out experiments and measuring results best you can, ideally through vetted A/B tests.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, you can subscribe in the form below to get future ones like this one straight to your inbox. If Twitter is more your speed, you can follow me there as well. 🔥