Skip to content
The Twenty Minute VCThe Twenty Minute VC

Luc Levesque: The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring for Growth | 20VC #906

Luc Levesque is currently the Chief Growth Officer at Shopify and also advises companies like Twitter, Pinterest, and Quora. At the age of 21, Luc founded TravelPod, the world’s first travel blogging platform. 10 years later, TravelPod was acquired by Expedia, where Luc led the creation of two award-winning products: TripWow and the Traveler IQ Challenge. Luc then served as an executive at TripAdvisor, where he built and led the growth team which helped TripAdvisor become the world’s largest travel site. Luc was then recruited by Mark Zuckerberg to Facebook where he was an executive and led the creation of Messenger Kids. ----------------------------------------------- In Today’s Episode with Luc Levesque We Discuss: 1.) Entry into Growth: When did Luc realise the power of “growth” within every company? How did Luc subsequently make his way into the world of growth pose-selling his first company? What does Luc know now that he wishes he had known when he made the entry into growth? 2.) Growth and Viral Loops: How does Luc define “growth” today? How should leaders choose what is the right north star to focus on for their business? Should this north star change? If so, how often should the north star change? How does Luc define “viral loops”? What makes the best viral loops today? 3.) Growth: Building the Team: When is the right time for founders to start thinking about building a growth team? Should it be standalone or integrated into other functions in the company? Should the first growth hires be senior and tasked with hiring the team or junior and be more lean as a way to test growth as a new function? What are the signals Luc looks for when hiring for growth? What are the best questions that reveal the characteristics growth leaders need to have? 4.) Growth: The Action: What is a growth decision Luc made without data? How did it go? What are some growth tactics that have become stronger over time? What have died a death? How should leaders know when to kill a new project vs continue and keep testing? What are the biggest mistakes Luc sees founders make when building and scaling their growth team? --------------------------------------- #Shopify #growthstrategies #HarryStebbings

Harry StebbingshostLuc Levesqueguest
Jul 12, 202253mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Shopify’s Luc Levesque Reveals How to Hire Elite Growth Leaders

  1. Luc Levesque, VP of Growth at Shopify and former Facebook/TripAdvisor growth leader, explains how he thinks about growth, viral loops, and building world‑class growth organizations.
  2. He defines growth as “whatever it takes to move the one critical metric,” and stresses the importance of choosing a clear North Star and structuring a standalone, empowered growth org.
  3. A major focus of the conversation is how founders should hire for growth: what to look for, how to interview, common mistakes, early red flags, and how to tightly align growth with product and marketing.
  4. Levesque also covers experimentation culture, preventing morale collapse when tests fail, the limits of funnel tweaks, and why the growth talent pool is so constrained—and how advisors can fill the gap.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Define a single, high‑impact North Star metric and align everything to it.

Growth is not a narrow function; it’s ‘whatever it takes’ to move one core metric (e.g., daily active users, successful merchants). Founders must make an opinionated choice and rally the entire growth org around that outcome, saying no to misaligned asks.

Structure growth as a standalone org, as close to the CEO as possible.

Levesque prefers a separate growth org with its own engineering, product, and analytics, tightly partnered with product and marketing. The head of growth should be near the ‘sun’—ideally reporting to the CEO and meeting weekly—so critical, time‑sensitive decisions don’t get stuck in layers.

Hire for seniority, pattern‑matching, and ‘signs of excellence’—and backchannel hard.

Because growth intuition takes many experiments and years to build, aim for the most senior leader you can find. Look for repeated success, ex‑founders, leaders that previous managers rehired, and clean, caveat‑free backchannel references; don’t be fooled by stage presence or Twitter fame.

Use deep craft interviews to separate true growth experts from passengers.

Ask candidates to walk their career from the bottom of their LinkedIn, dig into why they left roles, and press for ‘Tell me something I don’t know about growth.’ Then keep asking “why” to test whether they truly understand underlying mechanics or just executed a pre‑built playbook.

Empower growth with engineering and surface ownership, or it will stall.

High‑impact growth often depends on engineering-driven systems (algorithms, scalable loops), not just analysis. Where possible, let growth own key surfaces (flows, pages) so they can move fast; if product owns them, embed growth tightly in product reviews to avoid conflict and quality issues.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

I don’t define growth very crisply; it’s basically whatever it takes to move that one metric you’re trying to increase.

— Luc Levesque

The biggest mistake you can make as a founder is hiring the wrong person for the role.

— Luc Levesque

The best way to learn growth is to have a lot of reps—to have taken a lot of shots on goal.

— Luc Levesque

I try to look for what I call signs of excellence. Past performance is the best predictor of future performance.

— Luc Levesque

Growth is one of those things where if you make the right hire, it’s not a 0.5% increase. It’s literally a 10 or 100x increase.

— Luc Levesque

Luc Levesque’s background and entry into growth (TravelPod, TripAdvisor, Facebook, Shopify)What growth is, how to choose a North Star metric, and growth org designViral loops, SEO, paid channels, and evergreen vs. dying growth tacticsHow to hire senior growth leaders: process, signals of excellence, and interview questionsCommon founder mistakes when building growth teams and how to avoid themManaging relationships between growth, product, engineering, and marketingExperimentation, intuition vs. data, morale during failure, and the scarcity of growth talent & role of advisors

High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.

Add to Chrome