Adam Fishman: Takeaways from Lyft and Patreon; How to Build Viral Loops | 20VC #897

1. 0:00 – 2:58

   What was your entry into growth?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings0:00

      (beeping) Three, two, one, zero. You have now arrived at your destination. Adam, this is such a joy. I heard so many good things from Mike before the show, so thank you so much for joining me today.

   2. AFAdam Fishman0:15

      Yeah. Thanks for having me, Harry. Uh, uh, all those bribes to Mike have definitely paid off. Um, I hope I live up to all the hype. And I'm, I'm glad to be here.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings0:22

      Wait, you were bribe, you were bribing him. I was bribing him too.

   4. AFAdam Fishman0:27

      Oh. (laughs)

   5. HSHarry Stebbings0:27

      Mike, what, what is going on? This-

   6. AFAdam Fishman0:29

      He's double, he's double dipping. (laughs)

   7. HSHarry Stebbings0:31

      You know what? This Greylock salary clearly isn't enough for Mike these days.

   8. AFAdam Fishman0:36

      (laughs)

   9. HSHarry Stebbings0:36

      VC life has taken him, huh? Um... (laughs)

   10. AFAdam Fishman0:39

       (laughs)

   11. HSHarry Stebbings0:40

       Um, poor M- poor Mike, he does the intro and he's been so kind, and we rip him in the first minute. Um... (laughs)

   12. AFAdam Fishman0:45

       Yeah, we threw, threw him under the bus right away. Yeah. (laughs)

   13. HSHarry Stebbings0:48

       But, uh, I... (laughs) But I do wanna start, you know, when we look today at some of the growth roles you've been a part of, Patreon, Lyft, I'd love to hear, what was that entry into growth for you?

   14. AFAdam Fishman0:58

       Yeah. So, I, I started my career, um, a- as what I would call, like, a quantitative marketer. Um, I tried to be an engineer in school, but I kind of gravitated towards business and consumer psychology instead. Didn't really love engineering. Still love engineers, don't get me wrong. Love it, love my engineering friends, but I couldn't be one. Um, and then I was kind of in the right place at the right time, uh, early in my career, and I caught this wave of web analytics and experimentation. This was, like, pre-Google Analytics. This was, like, Urchin, like, way back in the day when Offermatica was the only testing tool out there, well before, like, Optimizely and all these other things. Um, and so I got, like, really deep into marketing channel and conversion optimization. I think that was, like, part of the engineer brain that I had. Um, I basically lived in Excel. I started writing front-end code as a hobby, um, just when I got bored. Um, and then my career kind of went through this series of step function changes in responsibility and scope, and I had a couple of really big jumps. So, the first one was when I left, like, sort of the, kind of cushy public company world, slow moving, and I joined a company called Zimride as their head of growth, and we pivoted Zimride to Lyft in about, I don't know, four or five months after I joined. Um, and Lyft was like getting a graduate degree in company building. So, that was, for me now, that was, like, more than a decade ago. Um, I, I, I learned a ton about how to scale a business, like, every corner of the product. Like, no job responsibility was off limits. And it was really, like, a catalyst for my career growth. Um, and so now I would consider myself more of, like, a product-led growth practitioner. Um, but I've really done everything, right? From, like, marketing to even, like, sales and ops and customer success. Like, I've led all of that stuff. But now I really focus most of my time and energy on, on the product experience. Um, and, and that's what I did at Patreon

2. 2:58 – 4:59

   Key takeaways from Lyft and Patreon

   1. AFAdam Fishman2:58

      et cetera, yeah.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings2:58

      So, so... Well, I, I wanna dive in. Before we kind of discuss, you know, the meat of the show, I do wanna dive into those two experiences with Lyft and with Patreon, you know? Such incredible companies in hypergrowth. If you were to isolate one or two key takeaways for you from your time at each, what would they be, do you think?

   3. AFAdam Fishman3:15

      Yeah. It's a great question. I think from Lyft, it's probably the impact of speed on decision-making and a, a healthy relationship with failure. Like, I think a growth person has to be almost immune to failure, because you get so many things wrong in your career. Um, but at Lyft, we moved so incredibly fast, and when you move at that pace, there's very few mistakes that are actually permanent. Like, you can almost change anything, right, and reverse decisions. Um, and it really just sort of changed my tolerance for making bets and assessing risk, and I've sort of... That's been, like, the bar that I've held up at every other company that I go to, is how fast we can move, right? Um, so that's Lyft. And then at Patreon, um... Patreon, I think it would really be, like, respect and reverence for our customer. So, I think one of the, one of the things that growth people can get a bad rap for is just sort of being like a, like a bull in a china shop, sort of, like, growth at all costs, right? But there were more than a few times at Patreon where we did something that seemed like it was in the best interests of our customers, and we were really wrong. A- and boy did we hear about it when that happened. Uh, when you work with creators, they have the biggest and loudest megaphones on the internet, um, and you really learn to respect their input into the product-building process and decision-making. So, that's definitely something I picked up at Patreon in my time there.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings4:39

      So, normally, I have, like, a structured process with, with shows, and structured, as you saw, with the schedule. But I do wanna touch on, on two things before, actually, 'cause they're very relevant to what you just said. You said kind of about the immunity to failure. I agree, as long as there's lessons that can be learnt from the failure. And with speed, sometimes there's not the lessons and it's just, you kinda fail the same

3. 4:59 – 6:25

   Learning from failure in growth

   1. HSHarry Stebbings4:59

      thing. So, how do you think about learning from failure in growth? Is that postmortems? Is that reviews? What is that?

   2. AFAdam Fishman5:07

      It's sort of all of the above. Um, I think, like, really, we do a lot of experimentation in growth. And that might be prototyping, that might be quantitative experimentation. Um, and you're gonna be wrong probably more often than you're right. Uh, especially as you do more and more things, um, it gets harder to be right over the long term. And so, what you have to do... Like, and a, a failed experiment is fine, as long as you take something away from that, you learn something new about your customer, you learn something new about your growth model or your business or whatever. Um, that's sort of super important to me. And so, yeah, I've done it through postmortems. I document experiments really, really well, um, make sure that I share that stuff really broadly with the company, because everyone can bene- benefit from that stuff that we're learning. Um, and yeah, you just have to develop a thick skin.... because growth is about taking a lot of shots on goal, structured shots on goal, not just, like, firing the, the spaghetti cannon at the wall. But, um, but, uh, with that structure, you're still gonna be wrong a good, healthy percentage of the time. Um, so yeah, so that's how I think about it.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings6:16

      The second element there, which is, you mentioned kind of Patreon and, um, sometimes getting it wrong and customers being upset. How do you figure out whether

4. 6:25 – 8:02

   Data or intuition in Growth?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings6:25

      to use data or whether to use intuition when making growth decisions? Intuition could say, "No, I know they will love this."

   2. AFAdam Fishman6:33

      (laughs)

   3. HSHarry Stebbings6:33

      The data might show actually they prefer something else.

   4. AFAdam Fishman6:36

      Yeah.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings6:36

      How do you think about data versus gut?

   6. AFAdam Fishman6:39

      Yeah, I think th- I think that's a really great question. Um, I almost never rely on gut. Uh, but I also think it's a, kind of a failure to over-rotate on just quantitative data. So the mistakes that we made at Patreon were, were typically just looking at numbers and not actually ... and thinking, "Oh, these numbers say that if we do this, it's in the best interest of creators. It's gonna work great." Like, we know what our bounding box is and our error, error, uh, potential. Um, and then, oh, by the way, we forgot to ask a single creator of- how they would feel about this change. And so when you do that, you learn that just because the data says something doesn't mean that everyone's gonna be excited about that, and even could be the majority of people are not excited about that. So, I always, uh, wanna blend quantitative assessments with qualitative, uh, discussions with customers, prototyping, like, things like that. You can't just do one of those things and expect a, a fantastic outcome 100% of the time.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings7:40

      It's kind of all tying in, so I'm gonna w- weave it back to the schedule, 'cause otherwise I'll just completely, like, go off tangent, which is, you know-

   8. AFAdam Fishman7:46

      That's fine.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings7:47

      ... pa- partly British, but whatever. Um, uh, so I wanna start (laughs) ... I'm joking, actually. Brits are very boring and structured, which is why I hate most of them.

   10. AFAdam Fishman7:55

       (laughs)

   11. HSHarry Stebbings7:55

       Um, but anyway, uh (laughs) , uh, obviously it's 20 Growth, and growth is misused, thrown around

5. 8:02 – 10:02

   How do you define growth today?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings8:02

      too much. How do you define growth and the head of growth today? What's that to you?

   2. AFAdam Fishman8:07

      Yeah, I think, I think you nailed it there. If, uh, if you ask 10 people, uh, about growth, you'd probably get 10 different answers, um, and, uh, on this particular question. So, I define growth as the function or functions that understand how a company grows, what levers they have to accelerate that speed and scale, and then can take a measured and tactical approach to testing out those levers, which helps them separate fact from fiction. The, the overall job of a growth function or a growth org is to connect more people to the value that the company is already creating, get more people to attach, get more people to come back, things like that. So, that's typically around acquisition, finding new customers, uh, retention, which is, like, activating and keeping those customers, and monetization, which is turning those customers into money. Um, so those are sort of, like ... You're not, like, inventing things from whole cloth when you're doing growth. You're taking stuff that's already there, and you're getting more people to, to touch it, to experience it, to build habits around it, et cetera. Um, and then like-

   3. HSHarry Stebbings9:12

      So, so-

   4. AFAdam Fishman9:12

      Yeah?

   5. HSHarry Stebbings9:13

      No, no, sorry, you go please. I interrupted you.

   6. AFAdam Fishman9:16

      I was gonna say, and then when you talk about, like, growth leaders, right, like the VP or the head of growth, um, that's the person who steers the ship, right? So depending on the stage of the company and the title inflation of the role, um, this could be a solo practitioner. It could be a manager of managers. Personally, I don't think you should be ahead of growth as a solo practitioner, 'cause like, yes, you're the head of growth, but like, you're a, a one, a one-person show, right? So I tend to think of the role more in the latter camp, which is like, a manager of managers or a leader of a small team, and you're responsible for kind of driving the strategy of your group forward.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings9:56

      Totally agree with you there, especially if it's a team of one. (laughs) Having a head of is, uh, rather ironic. Um,

6. 10:02 – 12:36

   Do you hire experienced or junior growth leaders?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings10:02

      the question is, do you hire a tenured head of growth who can then build out their own team first, or do you hire younger growth reps, growth engineers, growth product people? What's the right decision, growth leader or growth juniors?

   2. AFAdam Fishman10:18

      Yeah, I th- I, I think that's a really, uh ... I- it's highly variable. Um, it depends on a few factors. So the first thing I'd say is, do you have a growth model, uh, as a company? Have the lead- has the leadership team, has the founder or CEO done the work of understanding, how does this business grow? What do our loops look like? What brings new people to the product? What keeps them around? What monetizes them? So that's like, the starting point when you're evaluating. Secondly, then you have to ask yourself, "Based on this model, do we know what org functions and skills are necessary to iterate on this model and to test out our hypotheses?" And then finally, my next question is sort of, how involved does the founder want to be in running the team? Ideally, they wanna stay very close and connected to the work, but sometimes they really don't. They wanna be very hands-off. So, if they, if those three things are true, um, then I recommend hiring someone around, like, the director level or a touch below that, uh, someone who wants to be a player coach. You can build processes for testing and iterating on the model. They can create a baseline of data if it doesn't exist. They're really good at communicating, so they can share knowledge across the org and kind of start to build up that team. There really is, like, a sweet spot here. Too junior, and you just have a bunch of order-takers that can't prioritize their way out of a wet paper bag, uh-

   3. HSHarry Stebbings11:41

      (laughs)

   4. AFAdam Fishman11:41

      ... and figure out what they should be doing, or too ... Or, uh, or they've maybe only seen it done one way before, and so they just sort of, like, wanna rubber stamp it and say, "Well, this worked here, so therefore it must work here." Too senior, and then you don't have a doer. You have somebody who's like, "Well, I'm here. My first job is to hire 10 people." And that's not very helpful either, because growth's about making-... progress. Um, and so (laughs) , uh, you need to be making that tangible progress, so you gotta kind of find someone in that, like, sweet spot, mid-level, maybe punching above their weight a little bit.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings12:15

      Totally agree with you in terms of that kind of nuanced director level insertion point there. When we think about that positioning within the org, you know, we hear the hailed Facebook growth teams, which are obviously standalone and, you know, born in heaven, um-

   6. AFAdam Fishman12:30

      (laughs)

   7. HSHarry Stebbings12:30

      ... and then, you know, there's other c- uh, there's other companies which integrate them very much into product or marketing or different functional

7. 12:36 – 15:47

   Should a growth team be a standalone team?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings12:36

      areas. How do you think about the question of whether growth teams should be standalone or baked into existing functions?

   2. AFAdam Fishman12:44

      Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a great question, and I, I, I, I think people have been really hard-pressed to try to replicate the Facebook model to a T. Even people who come from Facebook sometimes struggle with that. Like, it's never as clear-cut, right? So, I think, um, where people sit in the org also depends on the growth model and how you grow. So, uh, if you have an acquisition problem, a retention problem, a monetization problem, that can really tell you, like, where and how to focus, and then what your product does and what market you're in can really dictate the channels that are available to you for growth.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings13:22

      Yeah.

   4. AFAdam Fishman13:22

      For example, if your product should really be growing, like, virally, the invitation, referral, collaboration, things like that, then you probably wanna start with growth as part of the product org, right? You wanna have a product manager that oversees growth. If you've got fantastic retention, um, if you don't grow that way, maybe your best channels are in paid acquisition for growth, then you might prioritize growth in the marketing org, and you might try to find, like, a, a, a growth marketing hire or something like that. So, it really, like, comes down to, um, you know, where, uh, w- where, where you put someone is dependent on how you, how you should be growing. One thing I'll add to this though is org design is rarely static. As a leader, you've gotta make sure that you communicate that, because the only constant in a startup is change, which includes org structure, right?

   5. HSHarry Stebbings14:15

      Yeah.

   6. AFAdam Fishman14:15

      Like, I was at Patreon for over four years. I was at Lyft for three years. W- we changed things a lot, right? Like, what you did, who you worked for, who you reported to. Most of the standalone growth teams that I've seen eventually get folded into one of the other orgs, product, marketing, something like that. But I've also seen teams break out, standalone growth teams, in order to drive more focus for a period of time, especially if it requires, like, a few different functional roles in the company, or you're introducing a new loop, or, uh, et cetera. But there are really, like, there are pros and cons to each structure. There's no, there's no perfect answer. Sometimes you get focus, accountability, good decision-making, but then you might also be seen as the cowboys of the org, and depending on the egos of the leaders in charge, that could be a problem if you're not part of their group, you know? The flip side is, like, in an embedded org, you don't have the organizational tension, but sometimes you have worse focus. So, like, the number of times where I've heard companies tell me things like, "Yeah, we're gonna get to that. Our growth, our growth team's gonna get to that, but right after we work on this core product issue or set up this marketing campaign." Like, that's not focus, right? That's not, that's not a good, a good growth team. So, yeah.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings15:31

      I, I-

   8. AFAdam Fishman15:31

      So, yeah. So, that's my, that's my take.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings15:33

      You mentioned the word loop there. When we spoke before, you said about building growth models around growth loops. Naturally, as any, you know, uh, egotistical insecure VC, I pretended that I knew what you meant and didn't question you.

8. 15:47 – 21:12

   What is a growth loop?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings15:47

      Uh (laughs) -

   2. AFAdam Fishman15:48

      (laughs)

   3. HSHarry Stebbings15:48

      ... uh, what did you mean by building growth models around growth loops? (laughs)

   4. AFAdam Fishman15:52

      Yeah.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings15:52

      And how do you advise founders on it? (laughs)

   6. AFAdam Fishman15:56

      Oh, I love the, uh, I love the humility of this conversation, Harry. This is, this is great.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings16:01

      (laughs)

   8. AFAdam Fishman16:01

      Just don't tell the other VCs, right? Um...

   9. HSHarry Stebbings16:03

      I won't. No one's listening. No one's listening. (laughs)

   10. AFAdam Fishman16:05

       It's our, it's our secret.

   11. HSHarry Stebbings16:06

       (laughs)

   12. AFAdam Fishman16:06

       This, nobody hears this. Um-

   13. HSHarry Stebbings16:08

       (laughs)

   14. AFAdam Fishman16:08

       ... so, uh, the growth model is, like, one of my all-time favorite tools. It's probably the most important thing, uh, and foundation to alignment, communication, prioritization, org structure. Like, all the stuff that we just talked about depends on the growth model. And this is what I, I teach this at Reforge, uh, where I've been for the last sort of 12 months as an EIR. It's one of the first things I do with an a- with advisory clients. Like, I've done this now, I don't know, dozens of times with companies. So, I start with a growth loop, and a loop is, to, like, break it down to its simplest thing, a loop is a self-contained cycle where the inputs into the loop become the outputs, so they generate something, and then that feeds back into the, the top. So, I'll give you, like, a perfect example of this. At Lyft, we had a very strong, uh, what I would call, like, clinically, a financially incentivized viral loop. So, this is your classic, like, give-get referral structure. I invite you to Lyft, and you sign up, and you get ride credit, and then once you take a ride, I get ride credit as the inviter. So, that invited person then goes on to repeat that invitation for other people. So, they become the, the output of that person joining becomes the next input into the system. That's a really simple loop. Um, so a product experience is comprised of a bunch of these things, um, and you can build them over time and add them on, and they compound. Uh, so they can work on not only acquiring users but retaining, engaging, helping people form habits, reminding them about the product's value. Um, and so the growth model is when you build this out end-to-end visually. Uh, that's qua- a qualitative growth model, and then when you apply numbers to this to understand the different steps in your loops and the cha- rate of change between the steps, that's a quantitative growth model.But even just, like, mapping out your loops and creating a simple visual of how you grow and the steps between them, um, is an excellent starting point. It points you at, like, where are your levers for growth, what should we be leaning into, uh, et cetera. Um, so yeah, so that's the growth model and growth loops.

   15. HSHarry Stebbings18:23

       When you map it out, should there be very few steps? Or question, is it the fewer the better from input to output?

   16. AFAdam Fishman18:31

       Yeah, I think the, the advice that I give to people is try to d- don't overcomplicate it. Try to create as simple of a structure as possible. A typical loop will have maybe between, like, three and six steps, um, depending on, on, uh, the speed of that loop and, and, and the, the complexity of the product. But yeah, I, I definitely, don't, don't build out a loop that has, like, 47 steps in it because that's not gonna help you with prioritization, right? Um, you're, you're gonna look at that and go, "Well, we're no bettel- better off than we were before." It's, like, too granular, uh, in, in, in a way. So, like, to come back to our Lyft example, in that financial viral loop, it's very simple, right? A person signs up. A person takes a ride. A person invites someone. That person signs up. That person takes a ride. The cycle repeats itself. Within that loop, you've got a bunch of levers for optimization. You have the incentive structure. You have the conversion rate from sign-up to taking a ride. You have the rate of which people invite other people. You have the number of invitations sent. Each one of those things is, like, a concrete, uh, uh, lever that can be worked on and improved upon to make that loop spin faster and grow bigger.

   17. HSHarry Stebbings19:43

       I guess at some point, do loops plateau, one, and then two, should teams have multiple loops concurrently running to ensure efficient growth?

   18. AFAdam Fishman19:55

       Yeah. Th- There are definitely plateaus to loops, and, uh, in Reforge, we call that, sort of, hitting max scope or, or hitting your horizon. Um-

   19. HSHarry Stebbings20:03

       Mm-hmm.

   20. AFAdam Fishman20:04

       ... some loops plateau much earlier than others, uh, depending on how much work it takes to kee- keep the loop spinning. So, things that are generated by users typically have a much higher ceiling because every new user can generate and participate in that loop. Things that are generated by the company, or paid advertising, or things like that, tend to have lower scopes because there's a limit to that. Uh, uh, you hit that limit much faster, and there's much harder, like, efficiency targets to get over. In terms of, like, how to have multiple loops, I typically recommend that companies start with a core thing, one core loop or maybe two core loops that, um, that they can really work on for a while. But you have to be able to project that out and see when you're gonna start to run out of steam, and then try to sequence into new loops or expand the eligible population that can go into your loop. There's a whole bunch of different strategies to, um, to kind of pushing past that scope, that, uh, scope limiter, uh, which we won't go into excruciating detail on this podcast on. But, um, but yeah, there's a bunch of ways that you can do it including sequencing into

9. 21:12 – 25:21

   How do companies go wrong with growth loops?

   1. AFAdam Fishman21:12

      new loops.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings21:13

      How do companies that you've advised most go wrong in trying to create loops?

   3. AFAdam Fishman21:20

      Hmm. I think it's a great question. The first thing I would say is they try to think that everything is a loop. Uh, it's really only a loop if it is a closed circuit that feeds back into itself. So, a lot of people will be like, "Well, um, what about business development and partnership? Like, that's a loop, right? Like, we get this partner, and that feeds in here, and then we get another partner." And, um, a lot of times I say, "Well, okay. In theory, yes, but that's a very slow process. How long is a single cycle of that, and how much work do you have to put in to maintain that? Does getting a new partner close the next partner? Probably not. You still have to put a lot of energy in from, like, your business development, or your M&A, or whatever." And so, stuff like that is where, uh, companies get really hung up. That's one. The second place is trying to have too many loops and focusing on too many things. It's better to narrow and focus on just a core set of things, uh, uh, at the beginning and really extract as much value out of those before, uh, getting distracted and moving on to the next thing. Um, and so, like, focus and thinking that everything is a loop are kind of two big, big problems that I see with a lot of my, uh, a lot of the companies that I work with.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings22:38

      Can you tell me about a loop that you've tried personally that went wrong and what you learned from it?

   5. AFAdam Fishman22:45

      Oh, boy. Um, yeah.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings22:48

      (laughs)

   7. AFAdam Fishman22:48

      I'll tell you about one. Yes, (laughs) I mean, right? I talked at the beginning about failing a lot, right? So, um, so here's one. Um, here's one where it, it... You would think in theory that it would work, but really the sort of psychology of the customer is what kept it from working. So, the, the example is, um, let's take an ed tech business. So, for a period of time, I was the head of growth for a company called Wyzant, which, uh, was, um, the largest, uh, tutoring marketplace in the United States, so helping you find a local tutor in your neighborhood. Um, we were masters of SEO, local search for, like, "I need help with calculus in this ZIP code." Um, we tried to implement a referral loop like Lyft where, "Hey, as a parent, I would invite another person. I would get credit towards tutoring. They would get credit towards tutoring." And we built a really nice system for doing this, and no one used it, and so it was, like, a pretty historic flop. So then, we started talking to people about, "Well, why aren't you using this?" We started, like, digging into the why, uh, of what we were observing. And what we found is that the problem with a invite or, sort of, referral loop in the United States is that there's a huge stigma associated with needing a tutor, and so parents don't wanna tell other parents that their kid is seeing a tutor because it makes them feel like their kid is dumb.And so, i- i- in, in and of itself, no one is gonna share this product in an active, proactive way. You're not gonna bump into somebody in front of the school in the morning and go, "Hey, little Johnny is struggling in math. Let me recommend this thing to you." Because it's almost like an embarrassment for you as a parent. But this is very different than other countries. Like, a lot of, uh, sort of Asian countries, like tutoring is just embedded in the world, like it's like a part of what you do. But in the US, not surprisingly, maybe our American exceptionalism here, um, it's really, uh, it's really kind of like a stigma. And so that loop didn't work at all, even though, you know, if you're doing pattern matching, you would say, "Oh, yeah, sure. It should work." It's, it's money. People like free money. Um, so yeah, so that was a, that was a big one.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings25:03

      I would love for, like, Roman, you know, erectile dysfunction to do, like (laughs) , "Hey, Adam, have 10% discount, brother." (laughs)

   9. AFAdam Fishman25:13

      (laughs) Yes, exactly.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings25:15

       Never used... Never, never-

   11. AFAdam Fishman25:16

       Probably-

   12. HSHarry Stebbings25:16

       ... used it before. Heard from a friend. (laughs)

   13. AFAdam Fishman25:18

       No, yeah, yeah. A g- a guy I know.

10. 25:21 – 31:41

    Hiring process for growth

    1. AFAdam Fishman25:21

       (laughs)

    2. HSHarry Stebbings25:21

       Um, listen, I wanna dive into the hiring process. And so we're gonna, we're gonna take it in the slant that you took it with me, which is that director level, kind of the mid-tier, not super junior, not super senior. And we're gonna go with that. How do I literally structure the process, Adam? I've never hired a growth professional before. Can you just-

    3. AFAdam Fishman25:40

       Yeah.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings25:40

       ... walk me through it from ground zero?

    5. AFAdam Fishman25:42

       Yeah. So, so first my take on this is, uh, so I'm going to answer your question, but first I'm gonna say that I have a little bit of a nontraditional answer for, like, uh, uh, th- the beginning part of this. Like, I try to interview people on the job, uh, especially leaders. Having gone through a bunch of executive interviews myself, probably like over a dozen times, um, I think that the traditional interview process for leaders is broken. Uh, and the best way to learn about someone is really working side by side with them. I learn a ton about companies just from being an advisor and working th- with them one hour a week, way more than in my conversations leading up to that relationship. Um, however, you need to assess people in some way before you do that. So I'm gonna, like, set my Adam hot take to the side for a second and tell you about, like, how I would structure an actual interview process for, for those folks who, like, really wanna do interviews, which I think is most people. So, like, here, here's the, here's the steps. Pre-work is first. You need to understand what you need. If you're a founder and you've done your job and you have alignment around how you grow, basic growth model, what levers you have at your disposal, then you definitely have a sense for the types of skills and background, uh, that you might need. So, like, don't hire a marketing person when what you really need is a product person. Don't hire a product person when what you really need is a marketer. So that's sort of, like, my first step. Know what you need. I tend to like, uh, what I call, like, quantitative generalists as my early growth hires. So these are people who can effectively prioritize and have a, um, no pun intended growth mindset. Um, and they're really good communicators, 'cause building the growth function requires a lot of knowledge sharing and a lot of confidence building and bringing people along for the ride. Um, so that's sort of one, right? That's my pre-work and, like, how I think about what I, what I like. Um, I also like failed entrepreneurs for this role because they have a really good appreciation for how important it is to acquire and retain customers. Maybe they built a great product, and then they couldn't get anyone to use it. And so, like, they have a real appreciation for why growth is really important. So, that's like step one, uh, like framing, like, the who, right? Then I write down the core competencies that I wanna test against throughout the interview process and figure out how you'll be testing them. So, what this looks like is, like, um, a quantitative exercise, a prioritization exercise, some sort of behavioral and situational interviewing, and probably a take home assignment that ends in a presentation where you have to communicate and, uh, and, and communicate understanding with people. You really wanna, like, simulate the on-the-job experience as much as possible during this process. So that's-

    6. HSHarry Stebbings28:36

       Oof.

    7. AFAdam Fishman28:36

       ... sort of, like, how I set it up.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings28:38

       I, I need to dive in on these tests. Like I-

    9. AFAdam Fishman28:40

       Yes.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings28:40

        ... I mean, I got shivers when I heard them. I felt like I was back at school, which was-

    11. AFAdam Fishman28:43

        Yeah.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings28:43

        ... you know, not that long ago, but I was kicked out, so I don't know if it went that well. Um, but, uh, my question to you is, um, if we go through them, can you just give me an example of what each one means so I actually know? So number one-

    13. AFAdam Fishman28:56

        Yeah.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings28:56

        ... was, number one was what? Quantitative-

    15. AFAdam Fishman28:59

        The quantitative exercise. Yeah. So your-

    16. HSHarry Stebbings29:00

        What, what is-

    17. AFAdam Fishman29:00

        ... quantitative exercise is maybe you give somebody a dummy data set, and I've actually done this before with, with growth PMs and things like that. So, you give somebody a dummy data set, and they have to organize and draw insights from that data set and make recommendations against it. So you might say, like, "Here's a whole list of, um, users and sort of cohort behavior and things like that. What are you observing here, and what do you think this means?" They could be wrong, but you wanna see how they, like, manipulate data. Can they build a cohort chart? Can they do, um, you know, some of the basic, like, building blocks of growth and understand, at least quantitatively, what are we observing with this set of users? Oh, everyone seems to drop off at week three. Okay. That's really interesting. What are you gonna do with that information? Well, I'm gonna dig into what happens in week three in the product experience. Are we sending people a communication? Are we not sending people... Like, all of that sort of stuff. So that's sort of, like, your quantitative exercise. Um, that's one. Then you've got a prioritization exercise. So the prioritization section might be things like you share some data or sort of snippets of your growth model and then a list of themes and tactics for them to sort through. Um, and you say, "How might you prioritize this based on this data?"... or this knowledge that I'm giving you. And then people will say some things, and then you give them additional constraints and new information throughout, and you see what they do with their prioritization. So, do they have a framework? How do they think about the impact, and the confidence, and sort of, like, the reach of these different experiments? Um, and so are they effectively, like, sorting things? Are they, do they, are they applying some sort of, again, framework to figure out how to prioritize? So, that's, like, the second one. That's your prioritization exercise. Very similar to what you do in a PM interview, by the way. Um, but-

    18. HSHarry Stebbings30:50

        Hmm.

    19. AFAdam Fishman30:50

        ... as a leader, prioritization is, is critical, right? Um, and then the, there's, like, the behavioral and the situational interviewing. So, this is really designed to get at that growth mindset. It's a lot of the, "Tell me about a time when, um, you did X," or, "Tell me about a time when you beser- you observed Y." Um, I think Patreon was kind of the master of this, because we also would do behavioral fit, and we had a system of core behaviors that we wanted people to have, uh, certain, like, actions that they had demonstrated that they'd taken in the past. And so that's, like, where all of these come in. Uh, typically, the types of people that you put into this interview situation are not, like, direct team members. They might be people who are sort of stakeholders or something like that. Um, but they're doing a lot of that behavioral situational interviewing.

11. 31:41 – 34:47

    Questions to ask in interview process

    1. AFAdam Fishman31:41

    2. HSHarry Stebbings31:41

       And what questions-

    3. AFAdam Fishman31:42

       And then the last thing-

    4. HSHarry Stebbings31:42

       ... wha- what questions do you like to ask there that really test the behavioral elements-

    5. AFAdam Fishman31:46

       Oh.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings31:46

       ... and essences of whether this person is a prick or not?

    7. AFAdam Fishman31:50

       Yeah. (laughs) Great question. Um, I ask questions, uh, that get at people's level of risk tolerance, grit, and humility. Um, so I ask questions about times when people were sure that they had the right answer to something and they ended up being wrong, and then how they communicated that to folks. I ask people on, like, how they recovered from that and iterated towards a better outcome. I'll ask questions about their ability to influence, "Tell me about a time where you convinced your CEO of something, that they were completely on the other end of the spectrum, opposed to you." Or, "Tell me about a time where, um, you, uh, did something wrong and got a piece of feedback about it, and how did you respond to that feedback? What, what was it? What did you do with that? How have you learned from it? What have you done better in the future?" So, I'm really trying to understand their ability to grow and change and, like you said, not be a jerk. If someone is not good at taking feedback or learning, you can suss that out in an interview process. Uh, there's a, like, there's a heavy level of ego that you can detect in an interview process by how these people, uh, how people answer questions. So, yeah, those are some of the things that I ask folks.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings33:05

       "I'm never wrong, and when I was, it wasn't my fault." (laughs)

    9. AFAdam Fishman33:09

       Exactly. A lot of that, right? Like, where do you seek to blame? You know, do you point it at yourself? Do you dis- do you, like, point it at other people, you know? So, as a leader, it's always your fault, right? No matter if it really is. So, you wanna, you wanna find folks who have that mentality.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings33:25

        You're right. No, I, I totally agree with you there. Is that kind of it, then? After those four stages, is that kind of it? Do we have everything we need? And do we make the offer then?

    11. AFAdam Fishman33:37

        Yeah. I think, like, uh, what I left out is this sort of, like, communication presentation stage. So, you wanna make sure that people can come in and maybe dissect a, a business that they like, talk about how it grows, and present an approach to changing it in plain language that a kindergartner could understand. 'Cause that, that's what they're gonna have to do at the company, right? Um, and so, like, that, a- a- let's say they've nailed all of those things. I think, yes, it's time to get to an offer stage, but I think, like, then you may want to get in and do, like, a real hands-on exercise with someone as, like, the final step. So, maybe that's, like, a multi-hour brainstorm or working through, like, a roadmap together, really seeing, like, how will they collaborate y- with you in a working session? Um, so that's a thing. And then, of course, I can't leave out my back channel references, right? Like, I'm constantly sleuthing, connecting to people to try to find out. I mean, you do this as a VC, right? Like, uh, you, you gotta know the dirt on someone before you, before you hire them. So, um-

    12. HSHarry Stebbings34:42

        Oh, no, no, no.

    13. AFAdam Fishman34:43

        ... the-

    14. HSHarry Stebbings34:43

        That, that would, that would constitute additional work, and so we tend to avoid all

12. 34:47 – 36:19

    Doing due diligence on the Lyft CEO

    1. HSHarry Stebbings34:47

       of that.

    2. AFAdam Fishman34:48

       (laughs) By the way-

    3. HSHarry Stebbings34:48

       Um, it, that would actually just- that would justify feats-

    4. AFAdam Fishman34:50

       (laughs)

    5. HSHarry Stebbings34:50

       ... and so that would be egregious. Uh- (laughs)

    6. AFAdam Fishman34:53

       By the way, I have a, I have a fantastic story about this, about VCs back channeling. Can I tell it really quickly? It's, like, a 30-second story.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings35:00

       No, I love, I love a story.

    8. AFAdam Fishman35:01

       Okay.

    9. HSHarry Stebbings35:01

       Go.

    10. AFAdam Fishman35:01

        So, the story is, so, um, the original series A investor in Zimride, which became Lyft, was, uh, Raj Kapoor at Mayfield. Um, and when Raj was doing his due diligence on John and Logan, Raj somehow found, uh, Logan's high school principal and contacted Logan's high school principal from Southern California and asked him about Logan. And he learned this hilarious story that Logan had reprogrammed an auto dialer to call everyone in the school and tell them that school was canceled for the day and threw it into, like, an uproarious, like, chaos, right? And so, um, Raj was so impressed by that story and that the principal remembered Logan, like, a decade after he had graduated high school that, um, that was, like, a, a, a, a big positive signal for him to, uh, to invest. So, I love that though.

    11. HSHarry Stebbings35:58

        Uh, you know-

    12. AFAdam Fishman35:58

        Like, talking to your high school principal, you know, um, is pretty great.

    13. HSHarry Stebbings36:03

        What, what an a- what was it, what an amazing story. That is, like-

    14. AFAdam Fishman36:05

        Yeah.

    15. HSHarry Stebbings36:05

        ... an ingeniously creative child. Um-

    16. AFAdam Fishman36:08

        (laughs)

    17. HSHarry Stebbings36:08

        ... okay. So, we've, so we've made the offer now. We've done those four, like, pretty stringent processes actually. We made-

    18. AFAdam Fishman36:14

        Yeah.

    19. HSHarry Stebbings36:14

        ... the offer. They're joining, amazing. Onboarding sucks

13. 36:19 – 39:05

    How to onboard smoothly

    1. HSHarry Stebbings36:19

       everywhere.How can I, as a founder and as a leader, make the onboarding process as smooth as possible for my mid-level growth first hire?

    2. AFAdam Fishman36:29

       Yeah. You're right. Onboarding sucks in the vast majority of companies. Like, a-a-and I don't know why. It's, it's not that hard to get right. Um, so the way that I think about this is you got a new hire coming in. They have a ton of momentum and a ton of political capital because they've just made it through your hiring gauntlet, and you're super excited to have them there. Everyone is like, "Great, our savior is here. We're pumped." Those first few months are critical to their success. If you think about it, like... Think about it like onboarding a customer. This is your activation experience. This is going to drive long-term retention and success of your customer, except now your customer's an employee. So, um, I think about that, I think about it that way, and you've really got to focus setting, on setting up this person for success, helping them achieve their first few wins, and kind of continue that momentum and capital. So, I'm a really big fan of the book, I think everyone should read the book, The First 90 Days. I have a copy somewhere, maybe, like, right here on my desk. Um, student of that book. It is fantastic. I recommend it to everyone. So, I make sure that we have a really clear and agreed-upon 30, 60, and 90-day plan and that other people in the org know what this plan is, not only just me and the person I've just hired, but other people that they're gonna interact with, so they know how they're spending their time. Um, month one is basically learning, building relationships, evaluation of the team, if there is a team. Month two is typically iteration and improvement on the growth strategy, uh, or creation of one if it doesn't exist. And then month three is really, like, longer term planning and alignment. And so I set up people with expectations of plans and deliverables at each one of those months. Typically, the plans have decreasing fidelity the farther out you go because it's hard to be certain about 6 and 12 months into the future. But I spend a ton of time with this person in the beginning to help them accelerate their learning curve, talking many hours a week, like, side by side. Um, it's crazy to me that some founders don't spend much time with new hires. They're just sort of like, "Good luck. Here you go. This is your job now." Um, and you just spent countless hours interviewing this person. So, like, now is when the real work starts. Um, so that, that's how I do it. I break it down in a 90-day, a 90-day plan with clear milestones at each of the 30, 60, 90. Um, so yeah-

    3. HSHarry Stebbings39:04

       Okay, so you said-

    4. AFAdam Fishman39:04

       ... that, that's how I

14. 39:05 – 40:40

    How to communicate effectively

    1. AFAdam Fishman39:05

       get people started.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings39:05

       ... I, I love it. Thank you for that. You said about communicating to the wider org. How do you do that? Is that in shared Notion docs? Is that in Pipedrives? Is that... Uh, help me understand. How do you do that and let everyone kind of feel the accountability?

    3. AFAdam Fishman39:21

       Yeah. Well, it's definitely not, like, flare guns and smoke signals and things like that.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings39:25

       (laughs)

    5. AFAdam Fishman39:25

       Um, whether or not it's No- whether or not it's Notion, or a Post-It Note, or a Google Doc, or a presentation, like, it really depends on the culture of the company and how they communicate. I'm a written communicator. So, like, when I joined, um, Imperfect Foods as their chief product officer, chief product and growth officer, I built this out in an Excel file, or a Google Sheets file, I should say. Um, and I had, like, specific rows, specific milestones, my plan, and very specific deliverables and what success would look like. And I worked with the CEO, who I was reporting to, to align on this stuff and say, "Hey, you're good with this? This looks like the work that I should be doing 'cause I think this is the work that I should be doing." And then I shared it with everybody who I was working with, the entire executive team, my own team, which was, like, 20 or 30 people at the time. So, like, I just published it far and wide. I was like, "Hey, whole company, this is a public document. You wanna see how an executive spends their time? This is what I'm doing for the next three months." Um, I'm a big-

    6. HSHarry Stebbings40:28

       Golf.

    7. AFAdam Fishman40:28

       ... fan of over-communication, so yeah.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings40:31

       Golf. (laughs)

    9. AFAdam Fishman40:35

       (laughs)

    10. HSHarry Stebbings40:35

        Love it, love it. (laughs) Um, I, I totally agree. Okay, so when we think about these new hires,

15. 40:40 – 42:55

    How long to give a hire before it’s not working out

    1. HSHarry Stebbings40:40

       how long do we give if we don't think it's working?

    2. AFAdam Fishman40:46

       (laughs)

    3. HSHarry Stebbings40:46

       Say it's 45 days in, you're like, "Yeah, the first month of relationship build didn't really go well."

    4. AFAdam Fishman40:53

       The... Yeah. Y- yeah. Well, look, I think a lot of this depends on the person and the learning curve. So, if they've done growth, but they're in a very new industry where they've never, like, worked in that space, the learning curve's gonna be pretty steep.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings41:07

       Mm-hmm.

    6. AFAdam Fishman41:07

       So, I typically give people, like, I give them that 90 days to find their footing and make solid recommendations, and get, get alignment, and maybe notch a few small wins in that time. But I think, like, one of the things that separates the good from the great is a lot of the best people that I've worked with, they come in on day one, and they've already been thinking about the business. They've got a plan. They've done some homework. They've done some learning up front. They're asking really thoughtful questions. Um, they've probably done this during the interview process, by the way. And they're moving fast because in growth, time is of the essence. So, like, if you're getting to 45, 60 days, and you're not seeing momentum... I'm not talking about, like, changing the trajectory of the company, 'cause that's hard, right? But I'm talking about, like, there's a feeling that you can get that this person is working hard, and they're moving, and they're hungry to understand and build, and they're, like, chomping at the bit to get going. Um, if you're not feeling that, like, part of the way through that 90 days, it might be time for a conversation, right?-

    7. HSHarry Stebbings42:18

       I, I su- I somewhat-

    8. AFAdam Fishman42:19

       ... and, like, level-setting expectations.

    9. HSHarry Stebbings42:21

       I think about it as, kind of, going a bit above and beyond, which is, like, it is going above and beyond to create a lot of this before you start. But if you're f-

    10. AFAdam Fishman42:29

        Yeah.

    11. HSHarry Stebbings42:29

        ... passionate about the company and how you're gonna think about new innovations within the team or the product, you do. And so, it, I think it's just a little bit, like, actually could you do two months of the three-month 90 days? Could you do 60 days and 30 days where they've actually coincided it because they've just got so much energy to do so? Do you see what I mean, like, really-

    12. AFAdam Fishman42:47

        Yeah.

    13. HSHarry Stebbings42:48

        Um, I totally agree.

    14. AFAdam Fishman42:50

        Yeah.

    15. HSHarry Stebbings42:50

        Li- listen, I spoke to some of your friends before this show, speaking of references, and

16. 42:55 – 48:02

    How to be a world-class cross-functional communicator

    1. HSHarry Stebbings42:55

       they said you were world class, world class when it came to cross-functional communication. So, this is tough 'cause not many (laughs) growth people are. Um, having interviewed quite a few. Um, so what does great cross-functional comms look like? And, like, as granular as possible, what do you-

    2. AFAdam Fishman43:13

       Yeah.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings43:14

       ... do to make growth an integrated and welcome part of a multifunctional org?

    4. AFAdam Fishman43:19

       Yeah. I have a- I have a pretty strong feeling I know who told you this about, about me, um, because he is also a master communicator himself. Um, so I- I've iterated on this quite a bit, uh, and I have a few frameworks that I, that I follow. So, like, first, one of my absolute, like, must-have expectations for myself and for anyone that I hire is that they have to overcommunicate until everyone gets it, that the most knowledgeable person always thinks that everyone else has the same level of understanding as them, and they're always wrong. You have to simplify and overcommunicate, and I expect, like, myself and everyone on my team to be the ambassador for our work with stakeholders. It builds trust. It's ridiculously important. Second thing I do is I adjust communication to the person or the group. So, sometimes sending that CEO or CFO an email is not the right approach. You've gotta sit down and, like, take them through it in a one-on-one environment and make sure that they really understand the what and the why. That's hard. It's time-consuming, but it saves you time in the long run. The third thing that I do is I create reliable, predictable communication streams. So, for example, at Patreon, I had a weekly email. I started it the first week that I got there. I didn't even know very much about the business, but I started sending this communication. It went out to a core group of stakeholders, leaders, peers, my own team. I called it the Ship It Friday Email, which is ironic because you're not supposed to ship things on a Friday. Uh, but that's the name. Um, and it had a couple of important sections in it, and they were the same every week: how are we doing, highlights and lowlights from the week, important learnings about our customers, our growth model, experiments, et cetera, and what was coming up in the near future. And this email update was so reliable and consistent that if I missed a week because I was, like, out or, like, I had to send it on Monday or something, people were upset. They were like, "I look forward to getting this communication." It was fun. It was funny. There was an occasionally, like, a GIF or a meme or, like, an Easter egg in it. But I had people coming up to, to me in the company and saying it was the clearest articulation of what an org was working on and the outcomes they were delivering, and people replying and asking questions and giving feedback. And that's how I knew that I was onto something because people were, like, engaged with it.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings45:42

       How long did that... I love that. I didn't know this. How long did that take to write?

    6. AFAdam Fishman45:46

       To, to, to write? Um, in the beginning, it took, it took time. It took probably 30 to 45 minutes because I was doing everything myself. Eventually-

    7. HSHarry Stebbings45:57

       But that, but that, that's okay, though. 30 to 45 minutes, like, bluntly, everyone can find the time for.

    8. AFAdam Fishman46:03

       It's a good... It's a really good use of time as a, as a leader. And eventually, you found- you find tactics to kind of distribute the work, so you create a template that your team can fill out and submit to you, so as your team grows and you're not in the weeds on everything and you don't have all the knowledge, you create that system so that the team can participate, uh, and help you. Um, the last-

    9. HSHarry Stebbings46:23

       I think a big mistake people... I, I think a big mistake that people make on something like that in particular, they feel that it has to be perfect. "I, I, I'm not gonna send it out this week 'cause it..." Like, I, I, I would say it's better that it's not perfect but goes out, but do, do-

    10. AFAdam Fishman46:36

        Yeah.

    11. HSHarry Stebbings46:36

        ... you know what I mean?

    12. AFAdam Fishman46:37

        Yes. Ship it. The worst case is somebody reads it and they're like, "I don't understand," and they write you back and they say, "Hey, help clarify this." That's actually a good thing. They're giving you feedback. They want to know. They're hungry for information. The last-

    13. HSHarry Stebbings46:50

        Yeah.

    14. AFAdam Fishman46:50

        ... like, thing that I would say, like, like a couple final thoughts on communication. One, it- you know the old saying, "A picture's worth a thousand words." I think, like, I think a prototype is worth a whole chapter in a book. So-

    15. HSHarry Stebbings47:03

        Huh.

    16. AFAdam Fishman47:03

        ... I try to communicate with visual aids whenever possible. Um, like, it's, uh, really important. Words on a page are great. A picture of what the thing is actually doing is even better. It's something that people can play with. That's one. And the second thing is I practice... I'm not gonna say, like, radical transparency 'cause I don't love this- the word, like, radical anything. Um, but I practice transparency, candor, and kindness in all of my communication. I find that it makes me much more likely to get feedback, which makes me better at communicating. It's sort of like a growth loop in itself. I communicate. People read it. They have feedback for me, and I make my communication better, and I still do that today, so, um-

    17. HSHarry Stebbings47:44

        I think, I think it's also just that-

    18. AFAdam Fishman47:45

        ... that's my last thing.

    19. HSHarry Stebbings47:46

        ... it's about making it human, like you said, with the memes, with the GIFs, with me taking the piss out of myself getting thrown out of school. I- otherwise, it's just like, this is how you build authentic relationships, and they-

    20. AFAdam Fishman47:56

        Absolutely.

    21. HSHarry Stebbings47:57

        I don't know if it's even... I don't even know if it's more productive. It's more fun. (laughs)

17. 48:02 – 52:30

    The Patreon Rebrand

    1. HSHarry Stebbings48:02

       Um-

    2. AFAdam Fishman48:02

       (laughs) True.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings48:02

       So, yeah. Um, listen, I, I want... Do want to ask one other thing that I was told about your, uh, world-class skills, but someone mentioned your insane work on the Patreon rebrand. Tell me-

    4. AFAdam Fishman48:13

       Yeah.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings48:13

       ... what makes for a successful rebrand? What's required? And where do many go wrong, do you think?

    6. AFAdam Fishman48:19

       Yeah. I think the first thing I would say is there aren't a lot of growth leaders who come into a company and then realize that they need to rebrand and reposition the company because that's the main impediment to growth. Um, but that was the situation I found myself in a- after joining Patreon. Um, first, I will say, like...I had a lot of guidance and help. I didn't know very much about branding, so I worked with somebody who had done a lot of repositioning. We paid someone to come in outside and kind of work one-on-one with me, and they were coaching and teaching me, as well as, like, leading workshops, providing some frameworks and things like that. So, like, don't assume that you know what you're doing. Ask for help. That's one. I learned a lot. I know a lot more about what I'm doing now. I could do this again myself, probably without the help. Um, the second thing is that when you're doing work around branding, um, and positioning, there's a lot of teammates who are skeptical that you need to do this work, because they're thinking about the day-to-day, and they're like, "Hey, the business seems fine right now." But they're not necessarily doing the job of the growth leader, which is to look into the future and see that there's a ceiling that you're gonna hit. It's not their job to do that. It's mine. So you have to bring everyone along for the ride, especially the CEO and the founder whose baby this company is, right? Like, for example, at Patreon, like, this was Jack's thing. He designed the brand. He positioned the business. To go to Jack and say, "Hey, Jack, this thing needs to be different than what you started it as," like, that's a tough conversation to have. Same with the skeptical engineering manager, the board, everyone. So, if you don't bring people along for the ride, it's gonna be a grind to get it done. Um, and then the third thing I would say is I brought a lot of my, like, growth skills to branding and positioning. So, it's really hard to test a brand change. You can't be like, "Hey, this whole thing looks different. What do you think? A/B test." Like, that, that doesn't really work 'cause you can't go back from that. Um, so we did a lot of customer interviewing, a lot of, like, qualitative, brand-blind positioning statement testing, this versus this, and they didn't know we were talking about Patreon. But we built up a lot of confidence that shifting from crowdfunding to membership, which is what Patreon is now, was sort of the right move. Um, and then, uh, the last thing that I would say is, like, really effective repositioning, a lot of people don't realize, like, your brand is just your words and your visuals. That's the promise that you're making, but the product experience is what really delivers on that promise, and we... Once we had the confidence that we were moving in the right direction, we introduced a whole bunch of new features and functionality at the same time that we updated our look and feel. We rallied the whole company around this, and we continued this drumbeat. Um, and then the last thing that I would say is when we launched the new brand and the look and feel, I prepared people to not look at Twitter for about two weeks. Which, one of our board members told me, "Don't look at what people are saying about this." So, everyone rushes to social media for their hot takes. "They don't like this logo. They don't like the way this thing looks. Who designed this? This could be done by a two-year-old with a crayon." Like, everyone's negative about it, and then it all fades away in two weeks, and people move on 'cause there's another brand that they wanna shit all over. So, uh, (laughs) um, so that was definitely-

    7. HSHarry Stebbings51:39

       And actually, they get used to it. They like it. They like it. I remember when, like-

    8. AFAdam Fishman51:42

       I-

    9. HSHarry Stebbings51:42

       ... it's the sa- it's the same with product features, you know? When the home button was removed from the iPhone, it was like, "You... Unbelievable! How can we not have a pone button?" And now-

    10. AFAdam Fishman51:51

        Yeah.

    11. HSHarry Stebbings51:51

        ... it is egregious to have this button at the bottom. So I totally-

    12. AFAdam Fishman51:54

        People hate change.

    13. HSHarry Stebbings51:55

        And you know-

    14. AFAdam Fishman51:55

        Yeah.

    15. HSHarry Stebbings51:55

        ... what the other thing is? I think that when it comes to the branding and the messaging, um, the devil lies in the neutral, which is like, you know, if you look at so many brands, they, they don't stand for anything. You're like-

    16. AFAdam Fishman52:08

        Yeah.

    17. HSHarry Stebbings52:08

        ... you know, increasing efficiency within teams, and you're like-

    18. AFAdam Fishman52:14

        (laughs)

    19. HSHarry Stebbings52:14

        ... f- uh, it sounds, it's-

    20. AFAdam Fishman52:15

        (laughs)

    21. HSHarry Stebbings52:16

        ... it's so unattractive, like, the way-

    22. AFAdam Fishman52:19

        Right.

    23. HSHarry Stebbings52:19

        ... like, just be opinionated, I always think.

    24. AFAdam Fishman52:21

        Yeah.

    25. HSHarry Stebbings52:21

        Anyway, I'm gonna get off a high horse because otherwise that will be a long-

    26. NANarrator52:24

        (laughs)

    27. HSHarry Stebbings52:24

        ... long discussion. Um, uh, I wanna move into, uh, my favorite, which is a quick fire, Adam. Does that sound okay?

18. 52:30 – 53:35

    Parallels between managing and parenting

    1. HSHarry Stebbings52:30

    2. AFAdam Fishman52:30

       Sounds great. Let's do it.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings52:32

       What are the parallels between management and parenting?

    4. AFAdam Fishman52:37

       (laughs) Clearly, you read the article that I wrote about this. So, uh, they're the same, basically. Uh, cultivating a growth mindset, providing choices, difficult conversations and empathy and collaboration, goal setting, rewards. Like, I always thought of myself as a great manager, and then I had kids, and I realized that tiny humans are a lot harder to deal with than adults. And then I took a parenting class, and I realized, wow, a lot of these managerial frameworks are the same things that they're telling us to do with our kids. So, it's basically the same. I think it was an eye-opening experience for me that there... That, you know, I don't think employees love to be referred to as your children, but, um, they kind of are, right? So, uh, yeah. They... Identical, I think. Parallels are like... They're one and the same.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings53:25

       You also can't fire your own children when you need to cut burn. (laughs)

    6. AFAdam Fishman53:30

       (laughs)

    7. HSHarry Stebbings53:30

       "Kids, I'm sorry, Dad wants-"

    8. AFAdam Fishman53:32

       Right.

    9. HSHarry Stebbings53:32

       ... "a new pair of"-

    10. AFAdam Fishman53:32

        Kids-

    11. HSHarry Stebbings53:32

        ... "headphones. You're out. You're out."

19. 53:35 – 54:05

    What growth tactics have not changed?

    1. HSHarry Stebbings53:36

       (laughs) That is too good.

    2. AFAdam Fishman53:37

       This is true. That's the only difference. (laughs)

    3. HSHarry Stebbings53:38

       Um, tell me, what tactics in growth have not changed over the last five years?

    4. AFAdam Fishman53:44

       Yeah, I think, I think a lot of it is the foundational things, like psychological principles, biases, topics like loss aversion, scarcity, status. Those sorts of things are, like, universal and permanent. Channels come and go, but some of the, like, core principles around how to motivate, uh, and how to tap into emotion, like, those probably

20. 54:05 – 55:10

    What growth tactics have died?

    1. AFAdam Fishman54:05

       will never change. Um, what-

    2. HSHarry Stebbings54:07

       What-

    3. AFAdam Fishman54:07

       So yeah, those are, those are the things.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings54:09

       What has totally died a death, tactic-wise?

    5. AFAdam Fishman54:12

       Oh. Far too many things, I think. Leveraging social graphs, address books, incentivized referrals. Like, they're not nearly as novel as they used to be because people have, like, productized that. Um, company-generated content, which you'd typically call, like, content marketing, much harder to do now. SEO, much harder to do well. They haven't necessarily died, but the bar for success...... is higher because the- there's, like, so many experts out there now and so much written about how to be great at this. And so, everyone's competing for the same few positions. Um, so yeah, those-

    6. HSHarry Stebbings54:47

       I think most people are shit at it.

    7. AFAdam Fishman54:47

       ... those are the things.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings54:48

       I just think most people are shit at it, to be honest.

    9. AFAdam Fishman54:50

       (laughs) They could be too, yeah. Yeah.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings54:53

        I do, I, I ... I, if there's one thing that I can be arrogant around, it's content creation in media company. I might be a shit ambassador, fingers crossed or not, but who knows there, but media companies, they just suck. It's boring.

    11. AFAdam Fishman55:03

        Yeah.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings55:03

        Um ...

    13. AFAdam Fishman55:04

        That's true.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings55:05

        If you wanna go to a school of media, call Adam. Uh, (laughs)

21. 55:10 – 55:58

    Biggest mistake companies make when hiring growth

    1. HSHarry Stebbings55:10

       I don't care. Um, uh, tell me, what would you say is the biggest mistake founders make when hiring growth teams?

    2. AFAdam Fishman55:17

       Yeah. I think there's two. One is that it's gonna be a quick fix. Growth is not a quick fix. It's a system. It takes time. You can incrementally win, but it needs to compound over time. And the second one is that they need growth help when actually what they're struggling with is product market fit. So, if you don't have product market fit, throwing a growth person into the mix is disastrous for your product, 'cause the last thing you wanna do is put your product in the hands of more people when it sucks. Uh, you almost always fail with those two expectations. So, uh, don't-

    3. HSHarry Stebbings55:47

       Or you won't, or you won't get it, or you won't get it in the hands of more people, but if an exec comes in, has bad culture, bad morale, brings down other functions, fucks up other relationships, and then-

    4. AFAdam Fishman55:56

       Exactly.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings55:56

       ... actually just causes internal discontent.

22. 55:58 – 56:47

    What would you like to change about Growth?

    1. HSHarry Stebbings55:58

       Yeah. I agree with you.

    2. AFAdam Fishman55:59

       Mm-hmm.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings56:00

       Um, what ... Tell me, what would you most like to change about the world of growth today?

    4. AFAdam Fishman56:04

       Oh. Um, I'd really like to see a lot more companies take a holistic approach, approach to growth. So, that's thinking about acquisition, retention, and monetization together as a system, versus just sort of seeing growth as, like, an acquisition problem, or, "We're just gonna get this marketing team in here and they're gonna take care of growth." So, that's one thing. And the other thing is I'd like to see a lot more growth leaders, like, sort of stop pattern matching and build a broader skillset around understanding marketing, product, and data, and figuring out what the right tools for the, for the job are, instead of trying to apply the approach that they've taken at a previous company and expecting it to work, uh, y- uh,

23. 56:47 – 58:37

    Worst growth experiment

    1. AFAdam Fishman56:47

       100% at their next thing. Um, so thos-

    2. HSHarry Stebbings56:49

       What, wh-

    3. AFAdam Fishman56:49

       ... those are two things.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings56:51

       What's been the biggest fuckup, growth experiment wise, you've had?

    5. AFAdam Fishman56:55

       Oh. Um, this is probably Patreon. Uh, it is. I actually was just talking about this at Reforge in a class yesterday. Um, we, uh, did a bunch of experimentation around moving, uh, payment processing fees from the creator to the fan, so making the patron pay for it. We tried to understand what that would do to conversion. Um, we had a really good quantitative sense of this. Um, we didn't talk to a single creator about it. And we announced that we were rolling this out, and the world imploded. The internet literally caved in on top of Patreon. That was how angry people were. Um, there were articles written. There were apologies written. First thing we did was we doubled down, and we're like, "No, this is why we need to do this." And creators were like, "Uh-uh. Not having it." There were ... It- it was named the fee-asco. We did it right at the end of the year. It ruined my December. It was a very dark time for me. But quantitatively, it looked great. So, we were like, "Yay, experiments!" Um, it was bad.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings57:58

       (laughs)

    7. AFAdam Fishman57:58

       We ended up backpedaling, rolling it back, uh, and learned a very valuable and painful lesson. But it kn- ... It punched us in the mouth for several months. Our growth rate slowed down. Creators lost a ton of trust in us. They felt like we were just like every other tech platform. And that was, like, the last thing. Like, we lost a lot in, in doing that. Um, they have since recovered. We recovered. I kept my job. It was great. But it was pretty dark there for several weeks. So, that's the biggest one of my, of my career.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings58:31

       Yay, experiments. (laughs)

    9. AFAdam Fishman58:34

       (laughs)

    10. HSHarry Stebbings58:34

        Um, that's rough. Yeah, no. I- I- I feel

24. 58:37 – 1:01:06

    Most impressive growth strategy

    1. HSHarry Stebbings58:37

       for you. I'm sorry, man. (laughs) That's tough. Um, final one.

    2. AFAdam Fishman58:40

       It was rough.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings58:41

       Yeah. What one company growth strategy have you most been impressed by recently?

    4. AFAdam Fishman58:47

       Yeah. I- I'm really impressed with companies taking advantage of new features in, in iOS. So, things like, companies like Locket, where they're taking advantage of widgets, uh, on the home screen and, and things like that, which are, like, interactive modules that you can, um, implement. Locket is really cool. One, it's, like, entirely product-led growth. The story behind how they got started is awesome. They focus on a bunch of those principles that I talked about, scarcity of invite and, and sending to people. It's a super simple product experience, hugely viral, sharing-oriented around photos. It's like this nice middle ground between, like, sort of an annoying social media broad- broadcast that everyone turns off, and a one-to-one message that has, like, no viral, uh, coefficient. So, like, I really like what that, what that company and that founder's been doing.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings59:37

       What- what- w- what's it called, Locket, L-O-C-K-

    6. AFAdam Fishman59:39

       It's called Locket, L-O-C-K-E-T. Yup. It's for sharing photos with your loved ones. So, you and your mom, for example, Mom could have a little Locket. I- I did see that you take walks with your mom pretty regularly, so, uh-

    7. HSHarry Stebbings59:52

       Mm-hmm.

    8. AFAdam Fishman59:52

       ... which I love. I do the same. Um, but yeah sh- try-

    9. HSHarry Stebbings59:55

       Yeah.

    10. AFAdam Fishman59:55

        ... get your mom onboard.

    11. HSHarry Stebbings59:57

        Love it. This is awesome.

    12. AFAdam Fishman1:00:00

        Mm-hmm.

    13. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:00

        You know what, though? Terrible name. Terrible name.

    14. AFAdam Fishman1:00:03

        (laughs)

    15. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:03

        So, all right. I'm-

    16. AFAdam Fishman1:00:05

        We should work on that.

    17. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:06

        I'm on, I'm on Twitter, can't find it. I'm on Google, can't find it.

    18. AFAdam Fishman1:00:11

        Oh. App Store. That's where you gotta go.

    19. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:14

        I'm at ... Wow. Yeah. Fuck. They need to change their name. I'm getting Love Lockets now when I'm Googling-

    20. AFAdam Fishman1:00:21

        (laughs)

    21. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:22

        ... Locket photo. G- 'cause yeah, photos-

    22. AFAdam Fishman1:00:24

        But it doesn't-

    23. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:24

        ... would be the worst thing. Uh-

    24. AFAdam Fishman1:00:26

        It doesn't help, it doesn't help that in the States, Mother's Day is on Sunday. And so, like, there's probably a lot of photo Lockets, like, uh-

    25. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:32

        Yeah. Eh! It's like-

    26. AFAdam Fishman1:00:33

        ... at retail. Yeah.

    27. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:35

        ... I'm getting Tiffany. No, I want a fucking app.

    28. AFAdam Fishman1:00:37

        (laughs)

    29. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:38

        Um, anyway. Uh, (laughs) uh, listen, Adam. I- I- I normally have, like, fun on shows. This was a lot more fun. (laughs) Um, I really appreciate you putting up with me. Um-

    30. AFAdam Fishman1:00:49

        Of course.

Episode duration: 1:01:06